


Finders Keepers

by beforethedawn, ConstructFairytales, Destinyawakened



Series: When in Romania... [1]
Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Extended Universe - Fandom, The Path (TV)
Genre: #EatTheRare, Alcoholism, Anal Fingering, Angst, Bickering, Blow Jobs, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Family Drama, First Time, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder, Religion, Slow Burn, Smut, awkward first time sexual situations, bottom!Nigel, cal/nigel, hannigram AU, meyerism, rarepairs, top!Cal, veggiedogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:38:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8004040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beforethedawn/pseuds/beforethedawn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstructFairytales/pseuds/ConstructFairytales, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destinyawakened/pseuds/Destinyawakened
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cal Roberts is in charge of setting up a compound in Romania. An earthquake hits, and he and his team go to help victims and to search through rubble. When he helps a gruff Romanian from certain death, he never expects his life to turn upside down completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1) No Beta. Edited to our best abilities. If you spot something terrible, let us know on tumblr please.  
> 2) There are mixed feelings with people on Cal Roberts. If you are looking for an aggressive and dominant Cal, please turn back now and take your opinions elsewhere. Cal has been written with a lot of things in mind and some serious character study.  
> 3) PLEASE mind the tags. We are preposting them before all the chapters are put up so you won't be left surprised or triggered. We will be posting trigger warnings in the notes for certain topics of abuse as well, just in case.  
> 4)This is a work of FICTION, please don't take much written here as certainty or as truth.  
> 5) Like what you see? Gotta question? Join us on [TUBMLR](http://constructfairytails.tumblr.com)

 

His last sight would be Gabi.    
  
There she stood, silhouetted in garish pink neon, black eyeliner streaked down to her cheekbones with grateful tears. She was still, somehow, beautiful.    
  
It wasn’t going to be a bad last sight at all, Nigel thought, and swallowed hard.   
  
The cops were closing in, jumping out of their cars. Nigel could hear the slap of their feet on the concrete as they ran closer, and he waited for a young looking, nervous one to get close enough to see a motion, but not what he had in his hand.   
  
Nigel turned sharply, pointed his fingers at the cop in a shape of a gun and sure enough, the young cop fired.   
  
This was all as Nigel knew it was going to happen.   
  
What he didn’t expect, however, was for the ground the cop stood on to slide away, like someone had knocked out the rest of the building from underneath him.    
  
The bullet that was supposed to kill Nigel whizzed through his ashy hair instead, and missed his skull as the city began to rock back and forth, violently. A fucking  _ earthquake,  _ of all the fucking things.   
  
Bucharest was never a solidly built city, and the first few sways were all it took to bring everything they stood on crashing down into a cloud of chaos and rubble.    
  
The last thing Nigel really saw was the neon sign falling end over end like a children’s toy before it exploded in a shower of sparks, and everything went  _ black. _

_ ***** _

The second the city stopped shaking and it was safe, Cal gathered up the rest of The  Movement. They loaded into cars and vans, borrowed mostly, and followed the stream of local news vans to the scenes of many sites that had all but crumbled into nothing. Piling out of the cars, Cal directed people and handed out work gloves from the back of the one Meyerist van they had purchased here, in Bucharest, weeks ago.

Donning a pair himself, Cal started to move around the news crews, who stopped their reporting to stare as he and his movement, his group, started to move pieces of rubble, looking for any signs of life there might be.

In his Meyerist ‘eye’ shirt, Cal gave  a glance to the cameras, a nod that he saw them, but pretended that it wasn’t  important that they were there, only the task at hand. He shifted through piles and piles, not a lot being found, but there were a few police officers, a few dead, some hurt. A tragedy, but Cal wouldn’t linger on that for long when he saw fingers move just slightly from one pile, and he started to hoist the rocks and rubble off without much effort. Everyone else went to help, getting the bigger pieces off in groups, and after what felt like hours, Cal could see more than just a hand, but an arm and a chest, ashen hair covered in dust and blood.

“I need paramedics!” Cal called out, moving more pieces, but not yet the man, since they needed to assess his injuries first.

The paramedics had already sifted through the rubble, and determined there was no one there to save. When Cal called out, they looked at one another, confused, sure the American was trying to help a dead man for the cameras.   
  
Then, the man coughed. His hand flexed, and reached for whatever, or whoever was nearest. His face was bloodied from a cut on his forehead, and one leg was all but smashed into a sick looking shape from debris, but he was certainly alive.   
  
The paramedics rushed over as soon as they could and began to stabilize the survivor as the news cameras filmed the rescued man, and then Cal, as though Cal had performed a miracle by finding the man when no one else could, and seeing life in him when no one else did.   
  
It was a miracle, as Cal knew The Light had guided him here to find this man, who would have been left for dead otherwise. He gave a short, clipped interview, in English, but then left quickly when they started to move the bloodied victim. Cal wanted to be sure he was there when the man was coming to, so he’d know just how lucky he was that Cal had been there.

Victims were often the best recruits, as they saw death once, they’d rather see something better the next time they were near it. The Garden offered all of that.

After Cal’s miraculous find, the paramedics let Cal ride with them in the ambulance to the nearest treatment center as they worked to stabilize their patient. They tied a tourniquet around his leg to stop the bleeding and began to move very slowly down the road, swerving to avoid fallen pieces of buildings, and dead bodies.

A woman shouted for the ambulance to wait, and stuffed a bill through the rolled down driver’s window. The ambulance stopped, and the woman climbed into the back of the ambulance carrying a camera, and began to snap photographs of the unconscious and bloodied victim.   
  
“You are with … Meyerists?” the reporter asked, pointing to Cal’s shirt as she took photos of the victim Cal had saved, as his face was covered with an oxygen mask. “From America? How are you here?” she asked, looking at Cal, curiously.

“Uh, yes. I’m with the Meyerist Movement. We’re starting a compound here in a few months,” Cal explained, furrowing his brows at the woman as she took pictures of the victim. “We all felt the earthquake just out of town and rushed in when we could.”

“How did you know to find this man? Rescue workers checked, they could not find a living person under the stone in the whole block,” she said, gesturing out the window with one hand.    
  
Outside, people were either the walking wounded with minor problems, or dug out, and placed along the side of the road with so many others, long, long lines of the dead. There was simply no inbetween.   
  
“Yet,” she continued, “you went to this man, you found him with no trouble. How?” she asked, and began to record their conversation, camera pointed now at Cal. The camera liked him, and his features. This might be the best story of the entire disaster.

Cal’s features lit up as the camera settled on him, and he sat a little straighter, broad shouldered. “I had a  _ feeling _ . I prayed on the way over that we  would find someone alive, someone…. saveable who was otherwise gravely injured.”

Looking down at the bloodied blond man, Cal gently touched the victim's arm, the one spot he was free of injury. “I was guided by The Light to find him,” Cal explained, taking a deep breath, as if overwhelmed by just the  _ thought _ of such a thing.  Cal became absolutely magnetic in that moment, and the reporter snapped another photo of him, and his hand on the injured man’s arm as the paramedics tended to him.

“What is The Light?” the reporter asked, fascinated by Cal as the rescued man’s fingers flexed a little when Cal touched him. She held the recording device closer to Cal as he spoke.

“The Light is comparable to God,” Cal said, his hand never wavered off the man, his eyes lighting up as he spoke, a charismatic smile pulling at his lips. “As his creation, we strive for enlightenment to become the image he always wanted. The enlightenment leads us to Universal Truth.”

“Beautiful words in the middle of such wreckage,” the reporter murmured, charmed by Cal as the ambulance stopped outside of a half-ruined hospital.

“Well…” Cal’s eyes flitted around the ambulance, aware of just how bad it was out there, and just how it must seem with them coming in, Americans with their strange movement, “We’re here to try and spread a little more of that beauty around. The more people we can reach, the better the  _ world _ will be.”

The paramedics unloaded the man on the stretcher, who groaned softly when they almost dropped him, and pushed him into the hospital where there was a long, long line of people waiting to be seen.

Patients who had families with them were pulled to the front of the line when they gave gifts of cash, or jewelry.

People without the means were left behind.

Cal hopped out, the reporter not far behind, and looked around at the mess. He turned his head back, glancing over his shoulder. “This is normal?” His brows knit together, more than ever able to see why Steve wanted  the Movement here.

“This is how it has been since the Communists,” the reporter nodded, unruffled by the custom.

The rescued man began to cough, and groaned a little, obviously in pain.

Cal had nothing to give as gifts to the doctors, a man of simplicity, he had only what was on him, and he was sure the victim was far from wealthy enough to manage to get himself in, if the people here were enough to go on.

“There’s no other way to convince them? This man could  _ die _ , and they wouldn’t care?” Cal asked the reporter, gesturing the man on the stretcher. At this rate, it was almost better to take him to the doctor they flew in for the new compound and hope for better than what the victim would get here.

The Meyerist van rolled up behind them, and Cal made his choice from there. “Angela, get this man into the van, we’re taking him to the compound to see Doctor Wright.”

Angela looked alarmed and the camera and recorder that the reporter wielded caught every single movement Cal made, every single word he said, every choice that tumbled out of his mouth. Fine, so be it. He wouldn’t sit around and watch someone die because they hadn’t the money to save him, when they  _ did _ have the resources.

“You have a doctor?” the reporter asked, surprised, the man moved again, starting to struggle. Someone rushed in to meet the reporter, with a video camera, and she nodded, as though she had managed to message him during the ambulance ride. He began to film both Cal and the bloody man on the gurney.

“Yes, a very good one,” Cal said, and went to help Angela with the stretcher, taking it from the paramedics, who didn’t seem to  _ care _ one way or the other. “Sir, please, stay calm, we’re trying to help you. Your leg is broken, you probably have a concussion.” Cal knew very little, but he knew enough to take some fair guesses.

They moved the stretcher and the man to the van, where the others were pushing down the seats in the back to make way for it. Carefully, Cal helped Angela lift the stretcher with the victim on it into the van, and the doors were shut. A shame to leave the media out of it, but Cal hadn’t the room to worry.

The reporter followed, snapping photos as the paramedics just left, going back to their ambulance. “Where is your compound?” she asked.

“About thirty miles from here,” Cal said, pointing East. He wasn’t too sure of the directions or names just yet. “It’s a big… wide open space with a few houses and buildings. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

“Good luck,” the reporter said, and got a final photograph of Cal and the injured man before the doors closed.

Cal hopped into the van through the side door, so he’d be at the victim’s head, where if the man came to, he could clearly be seen. After the van began to roll down the rubble-strewn streets, the injured stranger managed to open his eyes. His eyes were dark, and bloodshot, confused and irritated at what he saw as he looked up, at the blur by his side. He mumbled in Romanian, unintelligibly.

Looking down at the man, Cal lingered over him a moment, hand on his shoulder, gently, never applying pressure. “We’re going to help you.” He hoped even if his words were not understood, that the man would at least feel his sincerity.

The dark-eyed man squinted at Cal, and sneered. “I don’t fucking want your help,” he gasped, sweat beading on his forehead from the pain. Angela looked over her shoulder from the driver’s seat, meeting Cal’s gaze, but he gestured a hand at her to just keep driving to the compound. He’d handle this.

“You’ve been gravely injured, sir. My name is Cal, I’m with the Meyerist Movement and we have a doctor we’re taking you to-”

“I don’t need your  _ fucking _ help-” the man grunted out again, and narrowed his eyes at Cal, then looked down at his mangled leg. “Fucking  _ rookie _ cop can’t even fucking shoot straight,” he muttered.

“There was an earthquake,” Cal explained, “Do you remember any of that? You were stuck in the rubble.”

Earthquake … Nigel could remember the world sliding away, falling apart under his feet. His eyes closed for a minute, and he sighed through his nose. “Are you a fucking doctor?” he snapped, the agony of his crushed leg making him even more combative than usual.

“N-no,” Cal stuttered, shaking his head, but touched Nigel’s arm. “But we’re taking you to one that will help you. The hospital didn’t want to help.” The man seemed stubborn, but Cal was not going to shy away. He’d dealt with worst, he’d even converted worse.

Nigel shoved Cal’s hand away, defiantly, and tried to sit up, climbing off of the stretcher as much as the stubborn man could. “Let me the fuck out of this fucking van,” he muttered, taking short breaths, unable to breathe any deeper than that, sweating and pale under what seemed to be a combination of dirt and a tan.

“Sir, please, we just want to help. You’ll die out there if we leave you on the road,” Cal insisted, keeping his eyes on the other man, holding his amber gaze when he could, ensuring grounding and positivity. “Please, let my doctor at the compound help you.”

Nigel reached out and grabbed Cal by the shirt, then pulled him close, panting hard out of agony when he did so. Pain shot up his crushed leg to his armpits, and into the back of his neck, making it hard to think. “Dying was the whole fucking  _ point _ !” Nigel snarled.

Cal smiled down nervously, but then another wave of determination struck him, jaw shifting ever so slightly. “Wouldn't you rather know when you die that you are going into the Garden? You have to stick around to find the Truth. What's your name?”

“What the fuck are you talking about a  _ garden _ for!?” Nigel hissed, bending over his shattered leg with a stream of curses.  “My name is none of your fucking business, let me out of the goddamned van!” he ordered, almost roaring the words like a wild animal in pain might cry out as the van went over a large bump. Nigel went pale with agony, and looked like he was going to pass out as he gripped the edge of the stretcher, white-knuckling it.

“Where do you think you’re going to go if we let you out like that?” Cal asked, knowingly, looking the man over, despite the way he yelled, Cal could take that just fine. Not the first person to yell at him.

Nigel glared at Cal, locking eyes with him. He knew enough that Cal’s size didn’t deceive him. With enough of a temper on him, Cal could be trouble. “I’d say that’s my fucking business.”

“Right now, you’re  _ my _ fucking business,” Cal quipped back, Angel looked behind her at them both before pulling into the compound, slowly. The van rocked and heaved on the bumpy road over to the medical building. “Let us help you and then you can decide what to do from there.”

Nigel opened his mouth to retort, but the heaving of the van sent a fresh wave of agony through his body, making it impossible to speak. Finally, after a moment: “Why the fuck do you have such a hard-on about helping people?” Nigel growled.

Cal let out an irritated laugh as the van came to a slow and then a stop. “It’s what we do. We help people  _ physically _ -” he motioned to himself, his body “- and then help them spiritually. We want the best for everyone, but only the truly good and well intentioned people find the Light.”

“Oh, that’s what you are?” Nigel asked with a pained laugh, eyes narrowed at Cal as he breathed hard. “A Jesus freak? For fuck’s sake…”

“N-no,” Cal corrected quickly, the van doors opening, and he slid out to help get the stretcher out of the van. “We don’t believe in Jesus or God. It’s bigger than that. It’s…  _ better _ .”

The stretcher was lifted out, the rollers down, and Cal took up the head as they took the injured man inside, where Doctor Wright had been called head to be warned of an incoming.

“Oh good, it’s fucking better than Jesus, I was fucking worried,” Nigel snarled at Cal.as he was unloaded.

“What’s his name?” The Doctor asked, hurrying them into their makeshift surgical theatre.

Cal sighed; “He hasn’t said yet. Too busy asking us to leave him roadside and complaining.”

“Nigel, my name is fucking Nigel,” he wheezed, and glared at the doctor but winced when they moved him. He had wanted to die hours ago, for fuck’s sake. People crawling all over him trying to save him was the last thing he wanted.

“We’ll take it from here, Cal,” Doctor Wright said, and waved the 10R off, even though he hovered for a bit, hands in his pockets. Something in the Light was telling him to stay close, guiding him to this man.

“Do you have any fucking painkillers if you’re going to  _ insist _ I stay alive?” Nigel muttered through a clenched jaw to the doctor, and noticed Cal looking at him. The man’s eyes were blue as oceans, not that Nigel gave a flying fuck about him. “ _ What the fuck are you staring at? _ ” Nigel demanded, defensively.

“Nothing,” Cal said, but continued to watch from his more than fifteen feet away, arms crossed over his blue Meyerist t-shirt.

The doctor and nurse started an IV in Nigel’s arm, noting the line of old scar tissue in the hollow of both elbows from old injections, no new needle marks, however.  Nigel’s dark eyes fluttered shut when the painkillers finally began to flow through his system, and his handsome face relaxed once he was blissfully numb, and the world went fuzzy.   


He opened his eyes again, and saw Cal still watching him from far away. The doctor and nurse began to work on his leg, which looked awful, but Nigel felt nothing at all. He looked back at Cal again, slowly. “What’s on … your  _ shirt _ , anyway?” Nigel asked, much more social once he was high.

“It’s… an Eye. It’s a symbol for the all seeing,” Cal explained, hoping that the more questions Nigel asked, the more he might be interested in their movement.

Nigel beckoned Cal closer with a little curl of his fingers at him. His dark eyes were shiny and mostly black pupil from the drugs as the doctor and nurse worked on him quickly while he watched Cal.

The nurse gave Cal a look, but he stepped forward anyway since they hadn’t started to cut into him, or needed to, just yet. Cal loomed over the man, offering him a warm, empathetic smile that reached his eyes.

Nigel’s leg would have to be re-set, and without an OR, the best the doctor could do was drug Nigel to the gills and work quickly before the opioids wore off. As Cal moved closer, Nigel saw him walking as though he was moving in slow motion, toward him, and the light in the medical tent clung to the perfect angles of his face like Cal was a moving painting. Perfect looking in every moment.   


Nigel stared, and beckoned Cal even closer to him, looking his face over. “You are one handsome son of a bitch,” he murmured, and then patted Cal’s angular cheek, softly. “But you are so full of  _ bullshit _ .”

The other two looked at Cal, but he just chuckled, shrugging it off., touching Nigel’s shoulder. “It’s only bullshit if you don’t have the facts and artifacts to back it up,” Cal explained.

Nigel started to laugh, fully, like Cal told a good joke, and stared up at him as he shook his bleeding head while the doctor palpated his leg and frowned at what she felt the whole time while Nigel was distracted. “Kid,” Nigel slurred, and licked his lips, “I’ve been around more pushers than you have eyelashes on those pretty little fucking peepers of yours, and I know one when I see one. Got it?” Nigel asked, almost affectionate under the influence of painkillers, but he was still sharp underneath.   
  
“Cal,” the doctor said, with a shake of her head. “I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do here. This is a crush injury. The bone isn’t just broken it’s …” she looked at Nigel, wanting to be calm and diplomatic in front of the patient.   
  
“It’s  _ fucked _ , isn’t it?” Nigel asked, with a spread of his palms, and looked at his leg. It looked misshape, to say the least. “Go ahead. Fucking say it. It’s fucked up. Just say it,” Nigel insisted, almost jovially.   
  
“It’s … it’s bad. He needs an operating room,” the doctor sighed.

“Fix what you can,” Cal said quietly, steadily, not letting Nigel or the other two make worse of the situation for him. He’d fix this.

Cal pulled out his phone and started to make a few calls, waving the doctor on to patch up Nigel’s head and anything else that they didn’t need an operating theatre for. A few minutes later, Cal came back with a smile on his face.

“I’ve gotten us a flight,” he told Nigel, smiling like he’d just won the lottery. “Leaves in two hours. You’re booked to a private hospital in New York who is expecting you when we land.”

Nigel just blinked at Cal, then let his head fall back on the pillow and started laughing incredulously. “New-fucking-York? I’ll pack my bags, nice knowing you,” he sighed.

“I assume you have a passport,” Cal said, ignoring Nigel’s quip.

“At home,” Nigel muttered, with his eyes closed, and looked up at Cal again. “Which is probably under a metric ton of rocks and shit at the moment.”  As long as the pain meds kept coming, he didn’t give a fuck  _ where _ he died.

Two hours. Cal had two hours to get a passport, or they were smuggling Nigel in. Not the worst he’d ever done, honestly. “Keep him pain free, I’ll go find him a passport.” Cal said, though it was a farfetched sort of idea, he would try.

Cal left, leaving Nigel drugged up and mostly out of it.


	2. Chapter 2

An hour later, Cal stormed back into the tent, and started to get Nigel ready for their flight, determination etched into his brows as they loaded Nigel into the van. He had to change flights for them, they were taking a personal one, a favor from one of the Meyerists that was a pilot.

Loaded into the van, it was then that Cal noticed the nurse must have cleaned Nigel up a bit, less grime and dirt was caked on him, and his natural tan shone through. Cal couldn’t stop staring, and had even gone quiet as the van doors were shut. Angela started the van up, lurching Cal forward a little, he shot out a hand to catch himself on the stretcher.

Nigel opened his eyes at the movement of the van, and looked up to see Cal leaning over him. Cal’s almost oppressively blue eyes were close, and Nigel managed a sleepy, crooked smile up at the now familiar man with a slow blink at him. “Morning, gorgeous,” he murmured in a slow, drugged voice, and patted Cal’s cheek with one hand, almost mockingly, but smirked. “No luck with the passport, or were you busy curling those fucking baby deer eyelashes for a few hours?”

Cal flushed a pretty shade of crimson all the way up to the tips of his ears. He swallowed hard, shaking his head, jaw set tense to keep every other emotion he felt just then under control. “No luck. We’re moving you to a private flight, not at the airport. A little less comfortable, but safer for you.”

Nigel shrugged his wide shoulders at the thought. The nurses had changed him into a clean, white shirt, and stitched the cut on his scalp for him. He seemed indifferent to wherever they were going now that the pain was gone. After all, what was the fucking point? He looked up at Cal, and chuckled again. “Going to a shitload of trouble for me. You’ll probably regret that,” he muttered.

“That a threat?” Cal asked, brows raised at Nigel as he sat down near him, holding now to the handle over door to steady himself through the rocky path out of the unfinished compound.

Nigel laughed again, amused by Cal, and shook his head. “Gorgeous, when I make a threat, you’ll fucking know it,” he almost purred, and closed his eyes again, just resting.

“Then I don’t see why I would regret helping you. It’s clear you won’t get the help here.” Cal didn’t walk away from a challenge, especially not one as… handsome as the man in the stretcher.

“They should have fucking helped me, I gave those butchers enough business over the years to put their fucking kids through school,” Nigel muttered, and looked up at Cal. “Not personally, of course. I … send a lot of people there,” he insinuated.

Cal turned his attention to Nigel, brows raised skeptulatively. Nigel was trouble, he could tell, but Cal never judged someone too harshly on the first go, or maybe it was just  _ Nigel _ he wasn’t going to judge. The Light had lead Cal to him for a reason, and the 10R was not going to drop him like a bad habit just because he  _ might _ be some kind of mafia or hitman. “They looked too busy to bother since we didn’t have valuables in our hands.”

“Welcome to Romania,” Nigel chuckled, and looked Cal over, noticing the way his neck sloped into compact, but strong-looking shoulders. “Nobody does a fucking thing for free, Blue Eyes.”

“America is the same,  _ but _ I’m certain they’ll help you, we’ll figure it out.” Though Cal wasn’t so sure, they did have members in the medical field who would always be willing to help out, especially someone who might want to be a member someday.

Maybe.

Okay, who was he kidding? Nigel had the look of a man who gave up on anything spiritual when he was three years old.

“What makes you so sure? More angels like you back there?” Nigel asked, eyes drifting over Cal.

Cal chuckled, shaking his head. Angel? Mary had thought him that too, and look where that got him? He took a deep, cleansing breath. “Uhm, the Movement is vast and large.  _ Many _ doctors. I’m positive one of them will be able to treat you.”

“Right, the Movement,” Nigel sighed, and looked at Cal’s shirt, then up at Cal. “When the Hell did this become a fucking thing? Why hasn’t anyone heard of you before?” he asked, skeptically.

“It, uh, started in the mid seventies, by Doctor Meyers,” Cal explained, clearly he loved talking about the Movement and getting people to ask  _ more _ questions. “We never exposed ourselves to the media until now. We wanted only the purest and most willing people. It’s a long road up the Ladder to the Truth and Light.”

Nigel gave Cal another look, intense and almost amused. “Mhm. How did you get wrapped up in this shit, then?” he asked, with a heavy sigh.

“My father joined when I was five, took me with him. Here I am,” Cal said, a bump in the road rocked the van hard, and Cal had to brace himself on Nigel’s arm, fingers tight against his bicep.

Nigel braced his hand against Cal’s chest when Cal almost fell on him. He could feel Cal’s heart beating a little fast, and knew as he looked at the spread of black pupil in Cal’s eyes that Cal had never let himself do anything with a man.

“Shame that they kept you locked up,” Nigel murmured, hand still on Cal’s chest. Flirting with the obviously closeted man was a nice distraction.

“I’m…” Cal laughed nervously as Nigel looked at him like that, those amber eyes were starting to be a distraction he didn’t need. “I’m not locked up.”

“No? So, you can go wherever you want, with whoever you want, wear whatever you want?” Nigel asked, slyly, and gave Cal’s t-shirt a little tug.

“If I wanted to, yes. We only hold rules against talking to outsiders to the teenagers, because they’re so impressionable,” Cal explained, trying to ignore the fact that Nigel wasn’t really talking about that at all.

“Got a girlfriend at home, Cal? Boyfriend? Whatever?” Nigel asked, like they were in a lounge, not the back of a van going down a dirt road.

“No,” Cal answered, finally letting go of Nigel’s arm, only just aware that he’d been clinging to him. “No I don’t.”

“Why the fuck not?” Nigel asked, and looked at the spot on his arm that Cal touched, like his hands should have left some sort of sign of their presence there.

Cal followed Nigel’s eyes and then met them with his own sea colored gaze. “I’ve been told I’m not… capable of love. Not the kind people want to keep around. Too much baggage, too much…” Cal drifted off there, he didn’t get into that and definitely not with a van of members.

Nigel laughed at that, surprising himself with the sound as a spark of recognition flashed in his eyes, and he looked up at the ceiling and shook his head slowly. “Could have stolen the words right out of my ex-wife’s mouth,” Nigel sighed, and swallowed.

Cal had one person that wanted him, but he considered Mary better than that, and even let her get married. He knew how he was, and even Sarah had more distaste for him now. Hopefully their visit back to New York didn’t mean they’d encounter her. “Women are often brutally honest.” The van slowed at field with a large plane sitting in it, engines on. “This is our flight.”

“That they are,” Nigel sighed, and thought of Gabi with a moment of stabbing pain in his leg. “I might need another dose,” he muttered, able to feel the drugs starting to wear thin.

The nurse had come with them, and as they pulled the stretcher out,  she gave Nigel another dose and handed Cal a few other syringes of it, enough to get them through the flight. Cal pocketed them and started to move Nigel to the waiting plane. Nigel’s eyes drooped half-closed when the painkillers set in, and he sighed, floating again as they moved him to the plane. Everything seemed dream-like all over, much better than it had been moments before as the agony began to creep back up his body.   
  
“Thanks, Blue Eyes…” Nigel whispered, and touched Cal’s forearm with his hand, then closed his eyes.

The nurse and Angela both looked at Cal, brows raised, and Cal gave them both a stern one back. They hoisted Nigel into the plane, and ten minutes later they were getting ready for take off, Nigel off the stretcher for now, and seated sideways in a row of seats, leg up. Cal sat opposite of him.

Nigel opened his eyes again when he felt the wall behind his head, instead of the stretcher. He blinked his dark eyes slowly and saw Cal sitting across from him on what had to be the plane, then chuckled to himself. “You really got a fucking plane because you want to save my fucking leg, huh?” Nigel murmured, accent thick through the drugs. He smirked, crookedly, but charmingly at Cal, looking at Cal’s neck, his sharp jaw, and his blue eyes. “Do you have a million fucked up stray dogs at home, too?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

“I got a plane because I could. I'm taking you to avoid something much more serious. I could leave you, let the vultures take a jab at you, but I…” Cal shook his head, hands folded over his stomach where he sat. “I wasn't guided by The Light to find you and leave you.” Cal laughed; “No dogs. Not personally.”

Nigel raised an eyebrow at the idea, and smiled a little, to himself. He’d seen how Cal looked at him, how he stared, and guessed The Light was Cal’s inner voice telling him what he wanted to hear The Light needed him to do.

“No, you weren’t,” Nigel murmured, and laid his head back against the wall of the plane for a moment, which exposed his long, tanned throat. “This Light, does it tell you to do a lot of things?”

“It doesn’t speak to any of us but Steve. We’re merely guided. It’s something you reach deep down inside to learn to listen to, and soon it’s… just like a helping hand,” Cal explained, used to skeptical people.

“So, this other guy tells you what the Light tells him you need to do?” Nigel asked, raising his eyebrow at that.

“Not exactly. Steve’s the only one who has been able to climb the burning ladder. He’s the chosen one, he can transcribe and write the rungs that we follow,” Cal said, though he knew for a fact some of it was… false, as Cal himself was working on the last three rungs.

“Chosen one?” Nigel murmured, and tilted his head. “And who says he’s the fucking chosen one? Lemme guess: him?”

“He’s the only one who climbed the ladder,” Cal offered one more time, he wasn’t getting irritated, how could he when the other man was drugged. “The ladder burns, it’s on fire, only the chosen can climb it. We all  _ strive _ to be able to get there someday, but until then… Steve is our leader.”

“What fucking ladder are you talking about?” Nigel asked. Cal talked about it like everyone should know what he was referring to.

“ _ The Ladder _ ,” Cal said, he knew Nigel wouldn’t understand, and Cal didn’t have his brochures on him to show either. “In Peru, there is a burning Ladder. It never perishes. Steve is the only one who could climb it. Felicia tried, and she burned the palms of her hands. If you meet her, you’ll see.”

Not that Cal was going to let Nigel meet her. There were some people he just wasn’t comfortable with these days.

“Okay, a ladder. Have you fucking seen it? Does everyone worship it? It just keeps fucking burning?” Nigel murmured.

“It’s called having faith, Nigel. I don’t expect you to believe me, but you’re asking questions, and that’s a good start,” Cal said, a little smile on his face, the whites of his teeth peeking through. “I haven’t seen it personally. Not yet.”

Nigel just chuckled, and shook his head, looking at Cal. “Blue Eyes, faith isn’t always a good thing,” he sighed.

Cal sat forward, elbows to knees, hands clasped in front of him, head canted just  _ so _ . “Why do you think that, Nigel?”

“Conmen love someone with faith, and priests and bishops and all those bastards? Biggest fucking con of all. Does Steve get a shitload of money?” Nigel asked, knowingly.

Jaw tensing, Cal’s relaxed and welcoming stature changed immediately. “Steve’s not a conman! It’s not about the fucking money!  _ EVERYTHING  _ goes back into the Movement! You don’t know  _ anything. _ ” Cal stood, fingers gripped tightly into fists at his side and left Nigel to check on the pilot.

Just who the fuck did Nigel think he was…

Cal stopped short of the pilot’s door, and leaned back against it instead, trying his breathing exercises, in and out, slowly. At least he didn’t kill this one this time. There was that.

Nigel raised his eyebrows at Cal’s outburst, but hardly twitched a muscle, otherwise. He’d had bigger, armed men do a thousand times worse.  Cal reminded Nigel of a kid. A scared kid who screamed when someone tried to show him what the fuck was real. He sat back in the seat, and closed his eyes, thinking it over. People didn’t get fucking rattled like that unless they were having trouble believing in some way themselves…

Faith was real so long as you believed, and Cal had to remind himself that. Yes, he could make anyone believe, just about, except for cynics like Nigel. God, why was that bothering him so much? Cal thought better of expressing anger through the fist he’d bunched up, and instead smoothed hands down his chest, as if physically calming himself with them.

After ten minutes, he talked to the pilots, and walked back over to Nigel, but left him alone, and sat down across from him again with his phone to check on emails.

Hours passed, and it seemed Nigel had fallen asleep, or passed out, Cal couldn’t be sure, but he’d wait until the man was awake to give him anything else for the pain.

Nigel opened his eyes, his leg starting to throb hard. His head was fuzzy, and only when he looked across the aisle and saw Cal did he remember how he’d ended up here. “Going to yell at me again?” Nigel asked, with a stretch and a yawn, but grimaced at the pain shooting up his thigh, into his hips.

“Going to attempt to sway me from my beliefs again and call us all conmen?” Cal asked, not looking up from his phone at first, but then pocketed it and leveled stern blue eyes on Nigel. He’d tried to be nice, maybe not as empathic as he needed to be, but he was pretty damn sure that Nigel wouldn’t take that bullshit either.

“If you’ve got so much faith, some jackass making a fucking observation shouldn’t be enough to rattle your cage, should it?” Nigel asked, and smirked a little at Cal, unable to help but like the stern glare. There was something … alluring behind it.

“You made assumptions about religions in general, nothing more. It’s…it’s,” Cal stuttered, trying not to get worked up again. “Rude. You can believe or not believe. You asked questions, I answered them. I’m not shoving it down your throat, Nigel.”

Granted, he would have tried, and if Nigel asked more questions, Cal  _ would _ push.

Nigel chuckled a little at Cal’s choice of words, and looked at his self-righteous, but striking blue eyes. Cal looked so sure he was right, so sure he knew everything. It was sort of fucking adorable, and sad all at once.  “What a fucking shame, that can be fun, sometimes … the throat thing...” Nigel sighed.

Cal flushed up to the tips of his slightly pointed ears, suddenly too hot in his shirt, sure he’d even broken a sweat in seconds. He let out a soothing, cooling breath, shifting his jaw. “For someone who just lost a loved one, you sure don’t seem too fucking upset.”

Nigel looked down, then away at that, shifting his jaw. “We’d been separated, for a very long time. She was already with someone else, in fucking in love with him,” Nigel huffed, and looked down at his hand. He still wore his ring.  “I had him up on the roof, hanging from a rope by an ankle. I was going to kill the little bastard to teach her a lesson, win her back. He had to die, I would get her back … simple. But, then I fucking looked at her. She fucking  _ loved _ that loser.”

Nigel sighed, and licked his lips, pausing. “So, I decided to grant her the only sort of end to our marriage I believe in. Divorce is a fucking crock of shit, Cal, the coward’s way out. Divorce makes the fucking vows mean  _ nothing _ . Till  _ death _ do us fucking part. So, death it was going to be,” Nigel said, solidly, and looked at Cal, wondering if he understood.

Cal listened, arms folded over his chest, but his head was canted, open to learning about Nigel, what made him tick. “Vows were made by religions. Some part of you holds onto that, Nigel. Was she there when the earthquake hit?”

Cal hadn't remembered seeing a woman survivor.

“Vows are made by people. I made a vow, no fucking religion did,” Nigel sighed, and met Cal’s eyes. “She was there, about to run to her idiot. You think I fucking killed her?” Nigel asked, one ashy eyebrow arched as he watched Cal.   
  
Cal had to stop himself from rolling his eyes, and shook his head. The argument over religious practice was moot. “Not at all. There were few survivors around where we found you. None of them women.”   
  
Nigel sighed, and nodded, thinking about that in silence before he thumbed the long, perfectly straight cut that went from his forehead, into his hair. “I fucking gave her what she wanted,” he murmured, and swallowed hard. 

“Sorry to say. You're the one free of her,” Cal offered, wondering how much could be said of him with Sarah or Mary. Everything he had done moved them further and further away.

That was for the best.

“And vice versa,” Nigel sighed, heavily, then looked at Cal.”Nobody around for you? Hard to believe…”

“The one person I ever loved has a family. I haven't bothered  with anyone else either. I always hoped she'd come back. But-” Cal shrugged his broad shoulders and sat back, heels dug into the ground.

“And she fucking didn’t?” Nigel asked with a heavy sigh.

“I thought she was going to. Her husband transgressed, he wasn’t believing anymore… they weren’t living together,” Cal explained, with a huff. “But her attitude became hostile toward me. Not sure what happened.”

Oh, he had an idea, but he couldn’t pin point if Sarah knew about Silas or not.

“Women, huh?” Nigel  sighed, and looked over at Cal, letting himself stare a little. “Her fucking loss.”

Cal let out a long, cleansing sigh. “I haven’t bothered for this reason. It’s complicated, and I’d rather just…” he looked out at the horizon through the window. “I’d rather just be alone. Relationships are complicated, Meyerism isn’t. I know it. It’s accepting.”

“But fucking lonely,” Nigel pointed out, watching Cal speak, the lost quality in his blue eyes. Again, there was a flicker of something child-like in Cal for a moment, then gone.

When Cal had nothing, he had Meyerism, he had Steve, he had a way through his life. “I keep busy. Loneliness is what you make of it.”

“It’s not a fucking slap in the face watching everyone else find love, and wonder why you don’t get it?” Nigel asked.

“Are you trying to convince me to be  _ sad _ about it?” Cal asked, raising both brows, head canted slightly toward the other man, expectantly.

Nigel chuckled softly, looking back at Cal with intense, amused eyes. “Trying to get you to admit you’re fucking  _ human _ , not above all us needy sons of bitches.” Nigel patted his pockets, searching for his cigarettes with a grunt as he discovered he had none.

“It’s normal to be sad about it, but I’ve dealt with the fact I’m not suited for it my whole life. I have…  _ needs _ ,” Cal said through a tense jaw at the last word. He thought of Mary and how unfairly he treated her over those needs. He let her go for that very reason. She was too much like him with too much shoved down. “But I can’t… just take what I want.”

“Why not? The Light has rules about what you can fucking want?” Nigel asked, almost sleepily, looking at Cal through half-lidded eyes.

Cal got up and fished the vials from his pockets and started to make an injection for Nigel, knowing it’d been awhile since his last. Busying his hands helped him focus, not get too attached or emotional in the moment. “No. It’s personal.” He wasn’t, in all respects, the best person, he tried to be, but he was far from. There was a dead body somewhere to prove that.

Nigel watched Cal, and licked his lips before he rolled his sleeve up, exposing a well-muscled arm. “Or would you prefer to give it to me in the ass?” Nigel asked, with a smirk.

Another flush spiked through Cal as he knelt down next to Nigel, taking his arm in  one hand and slowly pressing the needle into his arm, noting, once again, the older track marks. “Might be less scarred up,” he snipped.

Nigel swallowed at the feeling of the needle under his skin, and gave Cal a look for that. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Cal shifted his gaze to Nigel for a split second, and that was enough to sent a jolt-- a spark-- right down to his groin. He swallowed for entirely different reasons than Nigel had, and bit his cheek. Cal made himself focus on what he was doing, and then pulled the needle out. It would hopefully be enough until they landed.

Nigel caught the look, and saw the flush in Cal’s face, and the sudden dilation of his pupils. For a moment, they both stopped breathing, and Nigel’s gaze went to Cal’s mouth … then Cal moved away, and the moment was broken.

Standing, Cal went to dispose of everything, trying to ignore that spark, and to level himself before he went back. Finally, he returned, keeping a very safe distance from Nigel.

The drugs sunk in again, making Nigel’s head spin and he relaxed. “Regret scooping me up out of the rubble, yet?” Nigel asked.

“Is that the only reason you’ve been trying so hard to flirt with me?” Cal asked, resentful in that moment, a bit of disappointment in his features as he sat across from Nigel again.

Nigel snorted a laugh at the thought, and shook his head. “I made a fucking cop shoot me, and fought like hell not to let you drag me out of there. You think I give a shit whether or not you throw my ass out of this plane?”

“No. I think you’re trying to make me uncomfortable enough that I leave you curbside when we arrive in New York,” Cal quipped back, already building up a few walls against Nigel. He wasn’t the best at reading people, but he could have  _ sworn _ something was there a moment ago. He wanted to believe it, too, that there had been a  _ reason _ he found Nigel out of dumb luck.

“I think you’re looking for a reason that doesn’t scare the shit out of you,” Nigel said, with blunt honesty.

“A reason for what exactly?” Cal asked, expectantly.

“Why I’m flirting with you,” Nigel said, with a direct stare, “and why you like it.”

Cal, supposed, desperation would do that to someone, like flirtation from just about anyone. But was he truly desperate now for a connection? He’d been attracted to men before, but he’d never  _ done _ anything about it. Steve was very grey on the homosexual scale of things. “Why are you flirting with me, then?”

Nigel’s sculpted lips curled up into a slow smile as he stared at Cal, and Cal’s strangely delicate features, transfixed by his eyes, the perfect little curve of his nose and the masculine, strong line of his jaw.  “Because I fucking want to,” Nigel answered.

“Good to see tragedy really brings you down,” Cal quipped, holding his arms over his chest again, feet planted wide.

“Like I said, my marriage had already been over for a long fucking time. I only accepted it just before my intended death,” Nigel said, with a shrug of his wide shoulders. “So, fucking sue me for looking after my wife left me for another man.”

Cal was flattered, actually, as he had been when Mary expressed her interest, even called him an angel. The difference here was that Nigel hardly had the same past as Mary. He spread his hands and shrugged. “I didn’t meant to offend.”

Nigel shot Cal a skeptical look, and laughed at him under his breath. “I’m a fucking romantic, what can I say?” he responded, with a little smirk, and started to search his pockets for cigarettes, again.

Cal just tipped his head a little, watching Nigel. “You don’t have them, the nurse took them off you when they changed you.”

Nigel swore under his breath, and rolled his eyes, then gave Cal an imploring look, and licked his lips. “You look too wholesome to smoke,” he sighed.

“Not cigarettes,” Cal admitted. “We do partake in sacred herb.”

Nigel burst out laughing at that, and smiled at Cal, showing off a couple of crooked teeth when he did so. “Weed? Fuck, alright, that’s fine.”

“I don’t have it on me, unfortunately, but once you’re set and healed, at the compound, I’m sure we can set you up on a pain regime.” They used it to enlighten, but Cal knew it was also not bad for the latter.

“How long are you planning to keep me, Cal?” Nigel asked, with an arch of one eyebrow. Silvery strands of hair fell into his face, making him look even more alluring and mysterious than before.   
  
“Until you’re healed. You can’t really go anywhere outside the compound, you haven’t got a fucking passport,” Cal explained, trying not to stare at Nigel too long. He was failing, miserably.

Nigel smiled a little, and couldn’t help but look back at Cal the same way. “Like some bird with a broken wing, huh? Going to make me earn my keep?” Nigel found his eyes roving over Cal’s jaw again, down his throat.

Cal breathed in slowly, considering that. “I might make you earn it.” Oh, God, was he flirting  _ back _ ?

Nigel’s eyes brightened, and he laughed at the way Cal let himself be a little playful in return. “I’ll have to keep this leg up, be off my feet… Hope you can think of something,” he teased, and winked at Cal before he pushed the strand of hair out of his face, and back, smoothing his hair down with one hand.

“I am…  _ sure _ I could think of many things you’d be good at that don’t require the use of your legs,” Cal teased, but his eyes were serious and almost stone blue, a hint of playful in his tone made it hard to tell which he meant more.

Nigel licked his lips, and looked from Cal’s clear eyes to his mouth, then back again. “I’m trouble. You might have to keep me at your place, you know, for the good of everyone…” Nigel smirked, purring the words with a thick accent.

Cal swallowed and ran his teeth over his bottom lip. “My place? So I can wait on you hand and foot?”

Cal actually flirting back was surprisingly satisfying. Nigel had been playing with him before, the way a cat might play with a mouse. Now, however, Nigel was surprised to feel that bantering with Cal felt the way it must feel to find the ideal dance partner. “My hands will pay you back. My feet? They’ll have to stay up, Blue Eyes.”

“And what do your hands do?” Cal asked, coy now, his confidence boosting each time that Nigel bantered back with him, a smile growing on his face the way it did when he did this with Eddie, only  _ different _ .

“Whatever the hell they want,” Nigel said, promisingly, and found himself distracted by the smile on Cal’s face. “They tend to have minds of their own, but I’ve never had a single complaint.”

“Is that good or bad? Too much work could mean they’re overworked,” Cal suggested, taking a breath as he tried not to laugh, mostly at himself. He shook his head. “I think the pain reliever is getting to your head. I have no excuse.”

“This pain reliever is like a couple of aspirin compared to the shit I used to take, and don’t worry about my hands, they love a challenge,” Nigel murmured. Cal laughing was like a breath of fresh air, Nigel wanted to make him laugh again, and blush, he wanted to shake Cal out of the self-righteous shell he wrapped himself in, and really see him properly.

A smirk stayed on Cal’s face as he looked from his hands to Nigel, slowly, big blue eyes brighter against the flush in his cheeks. “Do they?” He rolled his lips through his teeth again, licking it.

“They haven’t had a challenge in a long, long time,” Nigel chuckled, unable to look away from Cal’s face as it became more vibrant with color. He felt his own breathing change, deeper and faster.

They weren’t even touching, they didn’t have to be, and Cal could feel his heart beat faster, his breathing hitch a little in his throat as he imagined just exactly what Nigel’s hands could do to him. They were big, long fingered, and possibly rough… Cal breathed in slowly, flushing even deeper as he shifted in his seat. “Is the challenge worth it?”

Nigel looked Cal over, imagining in great detail what his body must be like under the clothes. He took a slow, deep breath and nodded, then bit his own lower lip. “I fucking think so. I haven’t slept with a man since before I was married, years ago.”

“I never have. It’ll be quite the challenge for you,” Cal said, his voice a little rough with the thought, and he had to move to adjust in his seat once again. Was he really thinking about this? Giving it good thought? Was the pressure getting to him? Cal was sure _ he _ was the one on drugs right now.

Or maybe just lonely, like Nigel said. And Nigel was very good looking, if Cal was honest.

Nigel gave a little groan at the thought, and laughed as he shook his head slowly, looking at Cal like he wanted to eat him. Without warning, the plane lurched in the sky and anything not strapped down started to fall around them as the aircraft shook. There wasn’t much, but the stretcher rattled and Cal got up to move it behind some seats, and the plane lurched again on his way back toward Nigel, causing him to lose his footing, and caught himself on the wall Nigel was leaned up against.

  
Nigel raised his eyebrows, and reached up with one hand to hold onto Cal’s waist as the plane shook and rocked. His fingers gripped firm, muscular flesh under Cal’s shirt, and Nigel didn’t need painkillers to be utterly distracted from the pain in his leg as the plane pitched and lurched in the sky. He pulled Cal down to sit on the edge of the wide seat he was on, keeping him close as the plane stilled itself, finally. “Careful…”

Hand dropping down to Nigel’s shoulder, Cal looked at the other man up close, unaware for a moment that he had said anything, utterly distracted by Nigel’s amber colored eyes, his lips, high cheeks bones… “Careful?” He blinked, more than aware of Nigel’s hands on him, his breathing quicker as his heart sped up again.

“You could have fallen,” Nigel whispered, close enough now to smell Cal’s soap-scrubbed skin.

“Trying to pay me back already?” Cal whispered back, swallowing thickly, Nigel’s hands are almost hot against him, felt through his thin shirt.

Nigel brushed his hand over the side of Cal’s waist to the small of his back, and was about to pull him closer when the co-pilot stepped out of the cockpit, and headed back to speak to Cal.   
  
Cal’s teeth edged together for a moment and then he pushed himself up, away from Nigel’s reach, and walked over to the co-pilot. 

“We’ll be landing soon,” the man said, awkwardly as he tried not to assume too much of what he might have just seen. “And sorry for the turbulence.”

Cal nodded. “We’ll buckle in then the best we can. Thank you.” He patted the co-pilot’s shoulder with a smile, and the man turned around to go back into the cockpit.

Nigel sat there, equal parts amused that they were almost caught, and frustrated that he hadn’t been able to kiss Cal before it happened. Fuck. He looked at Cal, biting the inside of his lower lip, skin still flushed. “Going down?” Nigel asked, innocently.

Standing there for  moment, Cal blinked himself out of his stupor and walked back over to Nigel, bending over him to try and get a belt around him from one of the seats. “We’re landing soon.”

Nigel nodded, and laid his hand on Cal’s chest, able to feel his heart beating as Cal fumbled with the belt to cross it over Nigel’s lap, which was both alluring, and strangely sweet. Most people who knew Nigel wouldn’t give a damn if he fell off the seat, or right out of the plane. Nigel pulled Cal closer by his shirt, and pressed a kiss at the corner of Cal’s lips as the buckle clicked. “Thanks, gorgeous.”

Cal froze, his heart beating faster now, like it was going to explode right out of his chest. His fingers lingered over the belt and then Nigel’s stomach as he turned his head instinctively into the kiss and locked lips with the other man. Sparks seemed to shoot right down his spine when their lips met, and Cal found himself sitting down again to get closer.

Nigel felt Cal’s lips lock with his own, surprising him with their softness. He grunted, and yanked Cal closer with a hunger that had been building for the entire flight. Impatient, Nigel stroked his hot tongue into Cal’s mouth, twisting his with Cal’s, then sucked Cal’s perfect lower lip into his mouth while his hands clutched at Cal’s back, wildly.

Hands moving to Nigel’s hair, Cal made a soft moan against his mouth, canting his head to lock their lips evenly, into perfect unison together, tongues sliding as Cal tugged on ashy colored hair, hungrily licking the inside of the other man’s mouth.

Cal, Nigel was learning, was a fucking good kisser, and kissed him back with the same reckless abandon as the plane began to descend through the air, toward New York. Cal kissed like he had been waiting a lifetime for it, passion boiling over inside him, hidden until just now.    
  
Nigel palmed the back of Cal’s head with one hand, and his ass with the other, holding him almost in his lap as he lost himself in the feeling of Cal’s desperate passion. Nigel knew then and there he wasn’t going to let this go, not if this was what Cal was like under the buttoned up savior front he put on.   
  
Pent up passion and pent up rage, but Cal was only giving into one of them right now, even if his mind was saying it was a terrible idea, his body was reacting differently. He moved, sitting sideways, half in Nigel’s lap, trying to get as close as they could without hurting Nigel. Cal slowed, only to catch his breath, but kept their mouths close, lips brushing, blue eyes meeting amber ones as Cal leaned and sucked Nigel’s bottom lip into his mouth.   
  
“Fuck-” Nigel gasped, appreciatively, and pulled Cal into his lap a little more, unable to feel pain through the heavy haze of painkillers, anyhow. He palmed Cal’s firm ass with both hands, and bit his lip, then kissed the side of his neck, under Cal’s ear, sucking at the smooth skin there.   
  
Cal shifted, straddling Nigel, careful as he could be in the heat of passion he was wrapped up in, holding the back of Nigel’s neck to keep him right  _ there _ at that spot on his neck that sent shivers of lust down his spine, straight to his groin. “Nigel,” he whispered roughly, like a prayer, like he’d been saying the name forever.   
Nigel shivered at the sound of Cal saying his name like that, and kissed the spot harder, scraping his teeth over the delicate nerves before he sucked, softly, then turned his head to drag his tongue over the lobe of Cal’s ear before he sucked that into his furnace-hot mouth, too.    
  
“Tell them to keep flying around, or something,” Nigel whispered, and bit Cal’s ear again.

“They have specific clearance,” Cal murmured, hand on Nigel’s chest, feeling his heart beat faster under his own hot palm. Shivering from Nigel’s ministrations, Cal groaned, achingly hard under his slacks, and he knew they didn’t have time to finish this.

Nigel nipped the lobe of Cal’s ear, then breathed against the delicate shell, and whispered as his hand brushed over the straining fly over Cal’s groin, “We’ll have to pick up where we left off later…”

“We’ll talk about when you’re out of surgery,” Cal breathed, biting his own lip as he tried to contain himself, tried to gain an essence of his control back. He’d been having a hard time with that since his drinking binge and Silas… Control over certain things just seemed frivolous. 

  
Nigel answered with another reckless kiss to Cal’s lips. He tugged at them with his teeth, as the plane’s wheels touched the ground, heart pounding at the way Cal’s mouth felt, and the thought that they had to stop, soon.

Cal felt himself slowly losing more and more control of himself, but Nigel was starting to feel  _ right _ . The plane coasted and soon stopped. Cal had to pull away, reluctantly. He crawled off Nigel and got the stretcher he knew they’d need to take down first, carefully, and Nigel would have to make it down the steps, somehow.

“You’ll have to walk, but you can lean on me to support you.”

Half an hour later, they managed to get Nigel down onto the tarmac where an ambulance waited, the paramedics looking honestly surprised that Nigel was alive at all, and not complaining of any pain. They got him into the vehicle, and Cal crawled in with them.

Nigel wasn’t a complainer, to begin with, and the combination of the heady rush from a frantic make-out with Cal with the pain medication was enough to leave his damaged body humming. He managed to get up onto the stretcher, and gave the paramedics a look when they began to attach monitors to his chest after undoing his shirt to show off a chest full of thick hair.

He looked at Cal, watching his reaction with a little smile. “Where the fuck are we heading now?”

“Private practice surgeon,” Cal said, sitting back. Looking around, everyone in the ambulance had t-shirts like Cal’s under their uniforms, clear that he knew people, could get favors done. Cal watched the medics work, but his eyes were mostly on Nigel, realizing how much he wanted to run his  _ hands _ through all that thick hair on his chest.

The medics had to shave some of the thick fur off of Nigel in spots to get the heart monitors to stick, and Nigel watched them, then Cal. “So, you’re all part of this … whatever the fuck?” he asked them, only now starting to get a sense of how big this might actually be.

“The Meyerist Movement,” Cal said, and the medics nodded, but kept working. “We have members all around the country that do various things, various occupations. We all help each other out. We’re a family.”

“Family?” Nigel asked, with an arched eyebrow as the medics started to monitor Nigel’s heart rhythms. “I know of a lot of large families that help one another out,” he chuckled, and started to wonder if maybe Cal was a sort of mob boss here.

“Not that sort of family,” Cal said, staying near Nigel’s feet and out of the way as the vehicle drove them to the surgeon’s practice. “But we do take care of each other. We’re a unit, a whole. You have a problem? The Movement will help you.”

“Fucking sounds like that kinda family to me, they do the same thing. You got a problem? Alright, I’ll help you. You can help me when I have a problem, whatever the fuck it is. Families like that started out when people had nothing but each other,” Nigel said, and a medic nodded his agreement, then looked at Cal, as though hoping he was allowed to do that.

Cal raised his brows, shrugging at the medic. “Maybe so. But we’re not funded illegally, we don’t…  _ kill _ people. We’re here to grow, learn, and be enlightened together.”

The ambulance stopped, and the driver said something about being there, and hopped out to open the doors for them.

Nigel gave Cal a look, and stole a touch with one hand against the back of Cal’s thigh, then pulled his hand away by the time the medics turned around. “Coming with me, Blue Eyes? Or do you have _ family _ things to take care of?” Nigel teased.

“You’re my responsibility,” Cal said, getting out first and then held the doors for the medics to wheel Nigel out. Once the stretcher was on the ground, he stayed close, unable to stay away. “I can’t go in with you, But I’ll be watching.”

The medics wheeled Nigel in, through a hospital corridor that was cleaner and quieter than anything in Romania, then into a private room that looked like it had never been used before, it was so clean. “Gonna be there when I wake up? Or …” Nigel let the end of the sentence dangle as the medics used the sheet under Nigel to lift him into the softer bed, and transferred the hookups to his monitors to the nicer bedside equipment.

“I’ll be here,” Cal said, hands in his pockets as he watched them set Nigel up and then prep him for surgery. “Got to make you earn your keep, after all.” On the heart monitor, Nigel’s pulse went from sixty to eighty, like a revved car when Cal said that. He swallowed, and nodded with a little smirk, then looked up at a doctor who walked in, an older woman in a lab coat and scrubs.

“You must be Nigel, I’m Dr. Hitchens, an orthopedic surgeon who Cal called about your case. You’ve made quite an impression on the news,” she said, shaking Nigel’s hand, then Cal’s. A little Meyerist eye-pin was clipped to the lapel of her white coat.

“We’re just glad you could help. He’s been on heavy pain killers the whole flight,” Cal said, with a warm smile toward her, like he’d practiced this a million times before. “Really, the news? Here?”

Cal knew it would get around, and had hoped it would, but so soon? He was honestly surprised.

The Doctor looked surprised that Cal didn’t know, and handed him her cell phone. “I was just looking at one of the stories out there with footage of Nigel’s leg to get an idea of his injuries. Press play, if you’d like. It’s all over CNN and Fox,” she said, as she looked at Nigel’s leg, unwrapping it slowly.

Sure enough, the footage on the Doctor’s phone was a movingly edited version of events, centering around the moment Cal pulled the stones away, off of what seemed like nothing but more stone, then pulled out a living man, like a miracle.   
  
“They’re calling it the Miracle in Romania,” she said, looking over the swelling and broken bones of Nigel’s leg under a bright lamp.

Cal showed the video to Nigel, as if to prove to him that he had no idea where he was at the time, it really had been him being guided. “I knew there’d be a story, I didn’t know it’d make it here so quickly.”

Nigel watched, and it did really look like Cal was digging for him frantically long, long before there was any sign on the video that he was under the crushing weight. He watched Cal haul his unconscious body out of the wreckage, and had to admit, it was impressive.    
  
“That is only one of several stories out there, the networks have called and called to ask if he was going to be treated here, they’re desperate to know more. Of course, I said even if Nigel was being brought here, we could not violate his confidentiality. I think they’ve looked elsewhere, but if you show your face out there, Cal, someone’s going to interview you,” the doctor said as she tested Nigel’s sensation in his damaged foot with the end of her pen, then took notes.

Cal handed the phone back, he would look up the rest later when he turned his phone back on. He hadn’t wanted to be bothered by anyone until he knew Nigel was in surgery. “It’s only a matter of time. Hopefully we can keep them off of us until Nigel is out of surgery and resting safe at the compound.”

“Compound? That sounds so fucking military,” Nigel sighed, and looked over at Cal as the doctor made a phone call, and a nurse came in with a patient gown for Nigel, and one paper slipper for his uninjured foot.

“It’s what we call it. It’s a gated community. Some people live there, some don’t. I do,” Cal said, but looked around. “Others, like the medics and the doctors, they live off site.”

“I have visited. It’s a wonderful place. Nigel, we’re ready to take you in. We will need you to get everything off, including underwear and any jewelry you wear, then put this gown on. When that’s done, a porter will bring you to the OR and we’ll get the surgery underway. Do you have any questions?” the doctor asked, professionally.   
  
“Am I going to lose the leg?” Nigel asked, point blank, which made the doctor look a little taken-aback by it.   
  
“It’s a very, very bad injury, I’m not going to say it’s not. However, we will do everything we can, including possibly splinting your leg bones with steel from the inside to keep that from happening. Your major nerves appear to be largely intact, your major blood vessels were damaged, but I think we can repair most of them. I will do everything in my power, as I would for any patient,” she assured him, and Nigel nodded.   
  
“You’re in safe hands, Nigel,” Cal said, gripping his shoulder with one hand, keeping it there. “I’ll be in the waiting room unless there’s anything else?”   
  
Nigel let the nurse help him take his shirt off, and then looked up at Cal, locking eyes with him. “Go on and wait, I get to sleep through all of it, after all. I’ll see you when I’m out? Think of how I might be able to make this up to you,” he said, innocently.

Cal held Nigel’s gaze for a moment and then  patted his good foot gently on his way out. “It’ll be the only thing on my mind,” he promised, smirking back at Nigel, and then nodded at the doctor as walked out.

Nigel watched Cal until the door closed between them, and barely even noticed the young nurse cutting his pants off.   



	3. Chapter 3

After a number of phone calls, mostly from Sarah yelling at him, and a few phone interviews, Cal fell asleep in the waiting room, dreaming on and off about Nigel, his almond shaped eyes, his hairy chest, everything, it all kept haunting Cal, but he couldn’t really say he minded. He woke with a start when the nurse touched his shoulder.

“Hm? Is… is he done?” Cal asked, blinking sleep from his eyes.

The nurse smiled and nodded. “He’s just about to wake up. We thought you’d want to be there, since you promised.”

“Thank you,” Cal said, and gathered himself up from the chair, smoothing down his t-shirt as he went, aware he was worn looking, and in need of a shower. He followed the nurse when she lead the way.

Nigel was in the recovery room, laying flat under a sheet. His leg was wrapped in a thick white cast, but was definitely still attached to his body. “You must be here to see Nigel”, one of the other nurses said, and walked Cal to Nigel’s bed. “He’s waking up a little, everything seems to have gone well. He’ll have to be in a cast for six weeks, but as you can see, the doctor managed to save his leg.”

Nigel’s eyelids twitched, and he groaned softly, hand moving on the bed.

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” Cal said, and walked over to Nigel’s bedside, watching him sleep, aware he was much more peaceful looking like this, but Cal sort of liked his hard edges.

Nigel didn’t look peaceful as much as he looked utterly drained. The pallor of his cool skin made his eyes look even darker when he opened them and looked up at Cal, and smirked a little, groggily. One unsteady hand lifted off of the bed, and touched Cal’s arm, as though to make sure he was real. “I’ll be damned, there you are,” he mumbled, heavily sedated.

“Still here,” Cal said, quietly, not sure what sort of state Nigel would be in or not. “And your leg is still attached.”

Nigel smiled, weakly, and pushed himself up with a shaky arm to look down at his leg, then smiled and looked up at Cal as he touched his arm again, savouring the small hairs on Cal’s forearm. “It’s part your leg now, you paid for it,” Nigel pointed out, which made perfect sense in his drugged mind.

Cal shook his head. “The Movement owns it then. The money is hardly my own.” He didn’t hold a high enough standing to claim any of that. Cal simply did what the Movement represented.

“Bullshit. You found me. Finders keepers,” Nigel whispered, and kissed Cal’s palm, with almost sweet, childish impulsiveness.

The nurses left and Cal sat bedside to Nigel, touching his face gently, almost affectionately. Cal was not sure how drugged up Nigel was, but it had to be more than before. “I did find you. I also promised to let you stay with me. The Movement won’t object.”

“Looks like you’re their fucking Capo,” Nigel murmured, seeing two Cals for a moment, one clear, one in shadow. They kept diverging, and coming together over and over again, both Cals looking down at him with those fucking blue eyes of his. “Can’t say I’m not a little impressed.”

“I’m… not. I’m in charge of East Coast Sect, that’s about it,” Cal said, though honestly, he was sure that was going to be taken from him soon, too. Over his dead body.

“I thought, I thought your movement was a bunch of hippies around a fucking fire,” Nigel admitted, and tried to turn toward Cal in the bed, pulled closer to him by the strange little magnet in his chest that seemed more and more attracted to Cal by the second.

“Sometimes there are fires, sometimes we gather around them. But, we live in houses, like everyone else. Our way of life is a lot like ‘hippies’, but it’s different too,” Cal said, chuckling a little when Nigel tried to pull him closer, resisting a little with a hand on his chest. “You’ll see when I take you there.”

“Okay, let’s fucking go, then,” Nigel said, drugged, and wrapped his arm around Cal’s shoulders, trying to haul himself up and out of bed to go see Cal’s hippies. “Get a van, or … whatever.”

“No, no… you’re staying here until they say you can go,” Cal insisted, pushing Nigel back down gently, hand over his heart. “Might be a day.”

“That’s too fucking long,” Nigel protested, and rattled the raised side of the hospital bed, mad at it. “Get this fucking cage open.”

Cal put his hand on Nigel’s to stop him anyway. “You just got out of surgery. We need to wait for the drugs to wear off. Nigel, I’m not going anywhere.”

That seemed to relax Nigel, and he sank down to the bed again, then blinked slowly at Cal, one hand through the bars to touch Cal’s arm. “I don’t feel drugged,” he mumbled, slurring the words a little.

“You are. I’m sure you are pain free right now,” Cal said quietly, and moved a little closer so Nigel didn’t have to reach for him.

“Nope, no pain,” Nigel whispered, and held Cal’s hand to his chest, over his slow heart, and looked at Cal with unguarded admiration. “You are fucking gorgeous, look at you. What a face…”

“Thanks…” Cal whispered, and brushed some hair from Nigel’s eyes, still dirty and crusty but he would get him in a shower later.  Oh God, that thought… “We’ll see how you feel when you aren’t under the influence.”

“I’m under your influence, Blue Eyes,” Nigel purred, and bit at the tip of Cal’s finger, scraping his teeth over the calloused skin there.

Cal flushed deep crimson, but didn’t pull his hand away, swallowing thickly. It was unethical to do this with someone in Nigel’s position though. “Nigel…” he meant to chide him, but it came out a heated whisper.

Nigel laughed and reached up to touch the beautiful flush in Cal’s skin, murmuring something in Romanian as he did so with an incredulous shake of his head. “Kiss me,” he ordered.

Leaning over, Cal kissed the other man chastely on the mouth, hands planted in the middle of his chest. “So demanding.” But, Cal could be too.

Nigel’s eyes closed at the kiss, and he sank down into the bed with a happy sigh, but kept one hand on Cal’s hand. “Too bad, you have to keep me now. The news is on about us and now you have to keep me,” Nigel rambled, high out of his mind as he held Cal’s hand over his chest.

Cal felt oddly responsible, as he had put the man here, he would have to keep him, and keep him safe. Nigel was Cal’s miracle, after all. The little bit of information was enough to daze Cal, and the rest of the reassurance came with the flutter of Cal’s heart.

Really, he shouldn't even consider this.

“Don't worry, Nigel, you'll be kept.”

Nigel closed his eyes, and seemed to fall asleep like that, holding Cal’s hand on his own chest. The monitor showed that his heart was beating more quickly now, not quite so sluggishly, like Cal’s touch fixed it for him. “You’d better,” he murmured, softly, and refused to let go of Cal’s hand.

The Light had brought them together, Cal was certain of it. Slowly, his faith was being rewarded and restored. He pushed the bar of the hospital bed railing down, and sat beside Nigel, so that he could sleep and Cal could keep an eye on him. Plus, the other man’s hand had an iron grip.

The nurses came back in after they took a short break, and one of them smiled at Cal and Nigel. “He must think you’re his guardian angel,” she smiled, as she took Nigel’s vitals.

Cal smiled over at her knowingly. “Could be. The Light leads us to those who need it most, we just have to be listening.”

“He’s doing well, I’m sure you could take him back to the compound any time. He’ll be tired, of course, but you have a doctor there, don’t you?” the nurse asked.

“We do. Nothing specialized, but I doubt he’ll need too much,” Cal agreed, taking out his phone with his free hand to call for a ride, a van was preferred, as the Prius cars were just not big enough to be comfortable for Nigel.

“I’ll get his medication together, then. He’s going to need some fairly strong painkillers for the first few weeks, make sure he doesn’t take more than the recommended daily dose,” the nurse said and walked off. Nigel sighed, and managed to curl closer to Cal, his ashy hair a mess.

A van was on the way to get them, and Cal pocketed his phone again, sighing. He looked down at Nigel and moved hair out of his face, though it did no good to fix it. He needed a shower.

“They’re letting me take you to the compound.” He wasn’t sure if Nigel could hear him, if he was asleep or just in and out.

Nigel opened his eyes at the sound of Cal’s voice, and blinked up at him, slowly. “Mm?” he hummed, still in a heavy fog. All he knew was Cal was there. That’s all he fucking cared about at the moment.

Cal chuckled a few huffs, and then tried to slowly take his hand back, but Nigel’s grip was strong and adamant. “I need my hand back for a little bit,”

Nigel grunted in protest, and opened his eyes a little more, then let go of Cal’s hand, begrudgingly. “What are we doing?”

“Leaving. A van is coming to get us. Don’t you want to go?” Cal asked, rubbing Nigel’s chest gently before moving away to go to the hall and get a wheelchair.

Nigel pushed himself up into sitting, and got out of bed, unsteady on his one foot, still wearing the backless hospital gown. The nurse hurried over to make sure he sat down, and took the IVs out of his hands for him, then bandaged the tiny holes they left before she helped Nigel into a pair of baggy scrub pants under his gown. Nigel wrestled the baggy gown off, with some difficulty and tossed it aside.

Cal came back just as Nigel tried that, shaking his head, and helped to get him into the wheelchair. “I didn’t mean get up without me here,” he whispered to him.   
  
“I can fucking walk,” Nigel mumbled, almost falling asleep on his feet, and leaned against Cal, one arm around his shoulders, no shirt on to cover up his bronzed skin. 

Cal helped support Nigel to the chair. “I’d prefer if you let me wheel you out to the van, just this once, okay?” Cal tried not to touch too much, though it was hard to do with Nigel barechested like this. Hopefully they had some t-shirts in the van.

The nurse returned with a scrub top large enough for Nigel, and stood by while Nigel muttered to himself, but sank down into the chair, for Cal. “I hate pajamas,” he grumbled as the nurse slipped the shirt on, over his head, then put a blanket around his shoulders.

  
Cal started to wheel Nigel out, taking the bag of medications for him from the nurse, and headed for the exit. The doors were held open for them, and as they reached the front, crowds of tv crews and reporters were gathered outside the door. “Well so much for quiet.”

Photographers began snapping photos, and phones and microphones were held out, toward Nigel and Cal. Nigel just managed a little smirk at the attention, and looked up and back at Cal, well aware of what more coverage meant.

“Mr. Roberts, how did you find this man?”   
“What is the Light?”

“Where are you taking him?” 

Questions came all at once from the crowd, and Cal and Nigel were awash in lights from television cameras getting footage of the healing man and his rescuer.

“Please call my office at the compound, I won’t be answering questions right now. I’d like to get this man somewhere he can heal, thank you,” Cal said to all of them as they pushed through, his shoulders hunched over the back of the chair as if trying to protect Nigel as much a she could.

The van doors opened and Cal got them over there, reports and cameras still in their face. He leaned close to loop Nigel’s arm around his shoulder to help him stand and get into the van. “Up, come on.”

Nigel wrapped his arm around Cal’s shoulder and stood, as the reporters went into a frenzy of photo taking at the image of support and concern, and Nigel managed to limp into the van, smiling to himself as Cal got him into his seat, and the driver passed him a box to put his injured leg on. “We’re fucking celebrities,” he chuckled.

“Let’s just hope immigration doesn’t figure out you’re here illegally,” Cal muttered under his breath, but he’d deal with that when it happened. Wouldn’t be the first. He crawled in and shut the door behind them, finally out of view of the reporters.

Nigel rested his head back against the seat, and looked over at Cal as the van drove away, slowly. “I’m just here on a nice trip,” he smirked, “visiting a friend.”

“You are, but  we smuggled you in,” Cal admitted, but they had done something similar in the compound before.

“I’m not fucking worried,” Nigel murmured, and yawned, then leaned over to rest his head against Cal’s shoulder, eyes closed, drowsy and not worried about anything at the moment.

“I’m sure you’re not,” Cal whispered, doing all the worrying for them both. He’d deal with it later, he was sure Sarah would rip into him again when they go there, but he also knew that she’d come around and see his side of this eventually, just like the Hondurans.

Nigel made sure the driver wasn’t looking at them, and slipped his hand over Cal’s where it rested, and closed his eyes. “Worst case? I’ll just take you back to Romania with me, and you can find some fucking hippies there, right?” The drugs were making it easy to say things like that, to ask a man he met a day ago to run off with him.

The offer was enticing, but Cal knew it was full of drugs, so he just turned and smiled at Nigel a little. The idea had been for him to run the Romanian branch, or at least that’s the impression Cal got, somewhere to push him for a while to keep him busy and out of everyone else’s way. “Yeah.”

“You worry too much,” Nigel murmured and ran his fingers over Cal’s hand, looking down at the bones of his strong hands. “You work with your hands.”

“Sometimes,” Cal answered, looking straight ahead to be sure the driver and passenger weren’t watching them. “We have gardens at the compound. We build our facilities ourselves.”

“I like that. Strong hands. I’ve built pipe bombs…” Nigel chuckled.

“I’m sure that… comes in handy,” Cal said, trying to stay nonchalant about it, though really he was already getting a good picture of the sort of man Nigel was in Romania. Talk about ‘family’, the marks on his arms, building pipe bombs…

“It can be. My ‘family’ wasn’t quite so fucking wholesome,” Nigel sighed, looking at Cal.

Cal turned his head a little to look down at Nigel where he rested up against him. “Sounds like you’ve had a rough life, Nigel.”

“I’m sure as fuck not after pity,” Nigel growled, and heaved a heavy sigh as the driver turned a corner. The force of the turn pressed Nigel against Cal a little more.

“And no one is giving you any,” Cal replied quietly, trying to be a soothing nature for Nigel. He stroked his hand down his arm.

Nigel settled, like a snarling bear soothed by the touch of Cal’s hand. “Good…”

Cal kept his hands soothing Nigel slowly for the rest of the trip. Once they were inside the compound, Cal got out first, the van parked near his bungalow, and offered himself as help once again to get the man out.

People hovered around, curious about Cal and the newcomer. They watched from a distance as Nigel leaned on Cal’s shoulders as he eased himself out of the van. The driver brought Nigel’s loaned wheelchair out, and Nigel sat in it, slowly.

“There,” Cal quietly said as he settled Nigel in, nodding to the people, giving little waves of ‘hello’ to a few, and then pushed Nigel toward his bungalow, taking the wheelchair accessible ramp he was now glad they had opted to put into the housing.

Once inside, after a few careful maneuvers, Cal shut the door and locked it. He dumped his keys and phone on the fireplace mantle, and rubbed two hands over his face with a heavy sigh.

Nigel looked around at the bungalow, intrigued by the little details. “Your place?” he asked, and watched Cal seem to agonize.

“Yeah,” Cal said, taking a few deep breaths and then went to help Nigel out of the chair to sit in another chair that was a lot more comfortable. “It’s not much, it’s where I stay and do my work when I’m here.” Cal was feeling a little in over his head, but it didn’t make his choices any less honorable in his mind.

Nigel wrapped his arms around Cal’s shoulders and pulled himself closer, his walking cast thumping against the ground when he stepped on it. “Is that what I am? Your work?” Nigel teased.

“You’re part of it. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for my work,” Cal insisted, carefully helping Nigel to the other chair, soft and cushioned, deep in size to take Nigel’s frame well.

Nigel sank into the soft chair, and let his hands linger on Cal, keeping him close. “I wouldn’t have let you take me anywhere if you weren’t so fucking handsome.”

“I don’t think you had a lot of choice,” Cal chuckled, petting down some of Nigel’s greasy, messy hair. “I wouldn’t have left you to die, handsome or not.”

“You might be surprised at how hard I can fight when I want to,” Nigel chuckled, and pulled Cal closer to him, to kiss his lips. “I  _ let _ you drag me here, Blue Eyes,” he confided.

Cal steadied himself as he was pulled right into Nigel's lap, hand on his shoulder, and their lips brushed. Every part of Cal took each opportunity to be closer to Nigel, even when he knew that restraint was something he needed to practice. Nigel was becoming as addictive as drinking, and as dangerous.  “Why?”

“You’re more like me than you think you are,” Nigel whispered, lips hovering just over Cal’s lips. “You’re strong. I fucking hate pushovers. That, and your pretty face,” he muttered, and looked at Cal’s eyes.

Cal worked hard to seem strong, he didn’t want to be seen as weak, he didn’t want to be seen as less than he knew his worth could be. Everyone else saw something different, but Nigel  _ actually _ saw. “Strong doesn’t make me more.”

“If I had to have some sort of fucking angel swoop down and pull me out of that wreck, I wouldn’t have wanted some fucking harp-playing cherub,” Nigel chuckled, and touched Cal’s face. “I’d want the fucking flaming sword archangel. That’s what I got. That’s why I came with you.”

Cal was about to explain how they don’t do really do angels in Meyerism, but the fact was that Nigel was believing, or starting to, and mostly in Cal, which was a relief. Cal gazed back at the other man, sitting across his lap, and smiled a little, up close. “You came because I wouldn’t let you say no. I was lead to you for a reason, Nigel.”

“I don’t fucking believe in God, Cal, or the Light or whatever the fuck. I do believe in  _ Fate _ ,” Nigel murmured, whispering it, like the possibility of him believing in anything was a secret to be guarded, jealously.

“It’s all the same when you consider the universe around you,” Cal explained quietly, aware Nigel might not remember this conversation later considering how drugged he’s been.

“That some things are just meant to happen?” Nigel asked, as he dragged his fingertips over Cal’s cheek, down to the jut of his strong jaw, then caressed the lower curve of his lips.

“Yes,” Cal whispered, leaning in a little more, drawn to Nigel like he was part of The Light itself. He hadn’t been this drawn to someone since Sarah.

The idea that Nigel was part of any Light would have made Nigel almost kill himself laughing. He leaned in, closer, and kissed Cal again, slowly, the way he wanted to since they had kissed on the plane, what seemed like years ago.

Cal’s eyes slipped half closed as their lips met, and his hand snaked up and around Nigel’s neck to the back of his head, pulling them closer nearly chest to chest as Cal twisted at the hip, locking their mouths together.

Nigel moaned, deeply, and kissed Cal with reckless abandon. One of his hands slid to Cal’s ass, squeezing it slowly as their tongues wound themselves around each other, and lips crushed against lips, unable to get close enough.

Moving one knee to the side of the chair, Cal pushed his other leg over Nigel’s lap, straddling the man as he kissed down to his mouth, heatedly, tongues and teeth lathing and clicking. “Nigel-”

Cal’s mouth was hot, and sweet. He kissed with years of pent-up passion, and Nigel was more than happy to stoke the embers of Cal’s untapped lust. He nipped Cal’s lower lip, then pulled away to kiss his throat again, the other side this time, biting softly and sucking in all the right places.

Cal groaned, craning his neck to the side as he held Nigel’s head there, fingers raking through his hair slowly, gripping.” Oh... there-” 

Nigel’s tongue rasped over Cal’s nerves, and then his teeth followed, slowly. He sucked a soft bruise into Cal’s skin, and squeezed his ass with one hand, kneading the perfectly firm muscle. Breathing harder, Cal rolled his hips with the pushing of Nigel’s fingers into his ass, sending sweet friction through his groin, sparking up his spine, and flushing skin even pinker. He grasped Nigel’s hair tighter, losing himself to the passionate lust he’d denied himself for years.

“Fuck, Cal,” Nigel moaned, approvingly. The painkillers were slowly wearing off, but he didn’t care. He pulled Cal closer, into his lap, and bit at Cal’s earlobe, then kissed his lips again, with a deep moan that hummed in Nigel’s broad chest.

Cal returned the kiss with eager, hungry lips, snaking a hand down Nigel’s chest and then under his shirt, feeling out the line of hair from pelvis up to the thicket on his chest with a groan, having been dying to get his hands in it since he saw it.

Nigel purred at the feeling of Cal’s fingers, and the urgent tugging. He cupped Cal’s ass with both hands, kneading the muscle with his palms. “Take your shirt off,” Nigel ordered.

Cal kissed Nigel again and then lifted the hem of his own blue eye shirt with the tips of his fingers, and pulled it off over his head, revealing a chiseled torso, slightly tanned from his work in the gardens.

“Fucking look at your body,” Nigel moaned, and palmed Cal’s shoulders before he leaned in and sucked a nipple.

Where Nigel had a lot of chest hair, Cal had very little, he was mostly smooth and hard lines. He held the back of Nigel’s head as he leaned back to accommodate, hips pressed forward into Nigel’s. Cal could not believe the want he had right now for this man, but all he could think about was his hands on him.

Nigel groaned and bit Cal’s nipple, tugging it with his teeth, hard, then did the same to Cal’s other nipple before he undid Cal’s pants with one hand. Cal lifted to give Nigel room, lifting up on to his knees as the fly unzipped, the button undone. Cal kissed down, into Nigel’s warm mouth, sure that they should be resting, especially Nigel, but Cal was too caught up in the moment to care.

Cal reached and pulled Nigel’s shirt up and over his head, palming down his chest.

Nigel groaned, and rubbed Cal through his underwear, already hard himself as he pulled his hand away to let Cal undress him. He kissed Cal, ravenously, bit his lower lip, then palmed Cal again.

Sliding his hand down between their hips, Cal almost nervously reached out to touch Nigel’s erection through the thin scrub pants, but the thickness of him only made Cal groan louder, never so aware as he was now of just  how much he’d been missing out on. Undoing the pants, he slipped his hand inside, brushing calloused palm against Nigel’s cock.

“Fuck, you are thick,” Cal moaned, low in Nigel ear.

Nigel smiled at that, throbbing against Cal’s palm. “Ever touched another man’s cock before?” he whispered, and undid the button of Cal’s fly, then pulled him out with a sigh.

“No,” Cal whispered, kissing the words against Nigel’s ear as he palmed him, his own cock hard and leaking pre-come against Nigel’s fingers. “You’re my first.”

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Nigel moaned, and managed to arch his hips a little, against Cal’s hand, then twisted his palm around Cal, and pumped him, slowly.

Cal let go with a  pleased hum as heat built tight in his core, flushing his whole body, head to toe. He kissed Nigel again, slower this time, longer, with long swipes of his tongue that encircled his mouth.

“The things I want to do to you,” Nigel moaned, deeply, against Cal’s mouth. “Make you fall apart, make you shout my name…”

Cal’s mouth dropped open with that, just panting heavily with Nigel, his words only made Cal rut his hips against his palm more, seeking sweet friction. “Nigel… fuck.” He closed his eyes, trying to last, fist pumping Nigel’s cock in time with his own.

“Are you going to come in my hand just fucking thinking about it?” Nigel gasped, and rubbed his thumb over the wet, sensitive slit.

“Y-yes,” Cal muttered, unable to get much else out before his hips worked faster, fucking Nigel's’ fist until he spilled creamy white all down his knuckles.

“Fuck, Cal, yeah,” Nigel moaned when he watched Cal screw his hand, and then erupt, hot and sticky. Nigel stroked Cal through it, revelling in the debauched beauty in his lap, with his lips against Cal’s ear, whispering words of filthy encouragement.

Cal shuddered to a stop, slumped there for a moment as he gained his senses back, his hand still tight around Nigel’s dick, which he started to fist again, thumbing the tip, twisting his calloused hands around the velvety shaft.

Nigel’s jaw dropped, and he closed his eyes at the feeling of Cal’s calloused hands on his dick. “Fuck, good, just like that…”

Faster and faster, Cal kissed Nigel as his fist worked him over, sliding and slipping over soft and hard edges. “Come in my hand,” he whispered roughly, wanting to taste Nigel.

“Bite my throat,” Nigel ordered, breathing hard as Cal worked him over, pinned hip rocking.

Cal leaned in a bit Nigel’s neck, not sure how much was too much, but he bit until he could taste sweat and dirt, and lathed his tongue over the spot, working Nigel over even still.

“Fuck, yes! Right there, Cal- Harder-” Nigel’s hands shook against Cal’s hair and back, clutching at them both, ready to come. “God, I want to fuck you…”

Even though Cal had come, he already felt ready to do anything Nigel wanted all over again. “Later,” he groaned, working Nigel as hard and fast as he could.

Nigel gasped, and stared into Cal’s eyes as he felt his body wind up tight, then burst in a flash of white light behind his eyes. “Fuck-” Nigel snarled, coming thick and hot in Cal’s fist, coating his palm with come as his strong body flexed and writhed.

Warm fluid coated Cal’s knuckles, sticky against his fingers, and he brought them up to his mouth, curious to taste, as he watched Nigel’s dark eyes. There were firsts for everything, a lot of firsts for Cal. He licked the come off slowly, surprisingly satisfied.

Nigel groaned at the sight of Cal tasting his come, and kissed his sweaty throat as he did so. “Like it?” he whispered, just under Cal’s ear.

Nigel was quickly becoming a lot more than just his big moment in the news, a big moment for the Movement. Nigel was seeing Cal for who he was, under all the prestige he placed on himself, the covers of stone facade and layers of false emotions. He wondered what exactly Nigel did see.

“Yeah,” Cal whispered back, honestly, turning his head so their lips met again, both of them mostly naked.

Nigel kissed the taste from Cal’s mouth, his wet, hot tongue moving slowly against Cal’s with a low hum. “The things I’m going to teach you,” he whispered, with a low chuckle.

“We’ll learn a lot from each other,” Cal whispered back, resting their foreheads together, hands now planted on Nigel’s tanned shoulders.

Nigel nodded, looking at Cal through his dirty hair with a soft smile. “What are you going to teach me, Blue Eyes? Hm?” Nigel asked, softly, and caressed the side of Cal’s jaw with one hand.

“To believe,” Cal said with a smile that lit up his eyes, slight creases around them. Nigel might not have faith yet, but Cal was a hell of a salesman, even if he hated that word by definition.

Nigel chuckled at that, but smiled at Cal, then kissed his lips again. “I believe a shower or something would be pretty fucking nice right now.”

Cal let out a slow breath and nodded. “I think we’ll need to either wrap the leg in plastic or something, or you’ll have to bathe lying down with it out of the tub…”

“That sounds good, the tub, I mean. I’ve still got half of Bucharest’s dust all the fuck over me,” Nigel muttered, and kissed Cal’s neck.

Cal fixed himself so his underwear and pants were pulled back up and then slid off Nigel, not bothering to button them. He did the same for Nigel and then bent to offer his shoulder to him, hoisting him from the chair. 

Nigel let Cal help him up, with another kiss, unable to stop himself now that they had started. Cal’s lips were too soft, and as addictive as any drug Nigel had ever tried. He looked Cal’s body over again, then kissed his neck. “Lead the way, gorgeous.”

Leading Nigel into the bathroom, Cal set him down by the tub, just on the edge as he turned the water on to warm, and went to grab a clean cloth and soap with the Meyerist eye on it. He set them both on the side near Nigel and slipped the plug into the drain to fill the tub. Cal then went and helped Nigel out of his scrub pants all together, carefully removing it from his casted leg last. Then, he leaned over Nigel to help him guide most of his body into the filling tub.

“Even the fucking soap has that eye on it?” Nigel asked, as Cal helped lower him into the tub, then tried to pull Cal in, with him, in his clothes with a grin.

“Careful,” Cal said, hand on Nigel’s shoulder to steady himself, slipped his shoes off and kicked them back behind him, sitting on the edge. He unwrapped the soap and dipped in the already growing dirty water and  lathered it in his hands and then the cloth. He started at Nigel’s shoulders and neck, soaping him up thoroughly.

Nigel let Cal wash him up, laughing a little at the way Cal scrubbed at his skin. “Like I’m a stray dog you found on the road,” he chuckled, and touched Cal’s surprisingly delicate ankle with his fingers.

“Not many dogs here,” Cal said quietly, scrubbing around Nigel’s shoulders and then under his arms, scooting him forward to get his whole back, the water already turning black with dirt. He reached over to let some of it drain away as he started in on Nigel’s chest. “You’re my first personal stray,” Cal teased, though he’d taken in many before, he’d never personally done  _ this _ with them.

Nigel put his head back, and let Cal scrub him all over, equal parts amused and relaxed by the vigorous cleaning. “I’m fucking honored,” he smirked, more bronze skin and ashy hair revealed by the second as the water rinsed the residue of ruined buildings off of him. 

Cal chuckled. “You should be.” He was very careful at the seam of thigh to casted leg, scrubbing the soap in there and rinsed it out without getting water into the plaster, and then slowly made his way over to the other leg, ducking his head a little as he skimmed across Nigel’s groin.

Nigel saw that, and reached up to touch Cal’s cropped hair with one hand. “Shy all of a sudden?” he hummed, smiling up at him as Cal explored his body, less purposeful now that he was below the belt, so to speak.

“I’m supposed to be washing you, not fondling you.” Cal rubbed the soap over the thigh crease there and then down Nigel’s legs and over his feet, getting every last crevice he could, before bringing it back up, his eyes meeting Nigel’s.

Nigel smiled widely at Cal, chuckling a little at Cal’s sudden piety. “You can do a little of both, you’re not being fucking graded on this, are you?” Nigel asked, and pulled Cal down, closer to him by his wrist, then kissed his lips to prove his point.

“No, but-” Cal gave up trying to protest and kissed Nigel slowly, building his courage this way as the soap slipped between Nigel’s thighs, circling down over his balls, and over his cock, over and over.

Nigel groaned into Cal’s mouth as he touched him more intimately, and arched up in the tub, against the sensation as he sucked Cal’s tongue, suggestively, almost purring against it.

Cal had found a weakness worse than alcohol. Nigel was going to be his undoing, but when he kissed like that, he couldn’t help but kiss him back harder, and grip the soap against his cock, stroking him.

“There,” Nigel moaned, and undid Cal’s soaking wet pants, then pushed them down his thighs, to his knees, and wrapped his hand around him. “Fuck, you’ve got nice hands…”

Giving up, Cal kicked his pants and underwear off and crawled into the tub with Nigel, carefully, straddling his good leg, his knee up against his balls. He started to kiss down Nigel’s jaw, against his neck, finding all the soft, sensitive spots with teeth and tongue.

Finally, Cal was naked, and Nigel stole a look at him. He was fucking perfect, from head to toe, and Nigel ground himself against Cal’s knee, slowly as he began to stroke his cock, squeezing and twisting his hand around it’s hardening length. “You’re fucking perfect all over.”

“You’re a terrible influence on me,” Cal murmured against Nigel’s ear, biting the shell of it and then the soft lobe, which he sucked on, breathing harder.

“You can’t have your halo on too tight,” Nigel whispered back, and tilted his head back for Cal, moaning at the feeling of his mouth there. “No fucking fun that way…”

Cal rutted against Nigel’s thigh as as he bit and licked the skin below his ear, and then kissed him full on the mouth again, tongue exploring. He took Nigel’s cock in to one hand and stroked hard.

Nigel moaned again, more loudly, and did the same to Cal, working him over with vigor. He licked his lips, and gasped, “Ever been blown by a man’s mouth?”

Cal tried not to laugh, looking at Nigel, shaking his head, mouths still close. “No.” He’d never so much as even allowed himself the thought of touching another man until Nigel, let alone let one give him a blow job.

“Come here,” Nigel whispered, and pulled Cal closer as he sank down a little more in the tub. “Straddle my chest.”

“We can do this when you’re better,” Cal insisted, but his hands moved on their own though, gripping the cloth rack over Nigel’s head, moving up his body to straddling his shoulder, biting the inside of his cheek.

“I have a broken leg, nothing wrong with my mouth, gorgeous,” Nigel growled, and pulled Cal into place, then looked up at him as he leaned in and dragged his wide, rough tongue over the head of Cal’s cock.

Cal was glad to have his hands where they were, afraid he’d grip Nigel so tightly he might hurt him more. Groaning, Cal pistoned his hips forward, sliding the length of his cock over the bed of Nigel’s tongue slowly, watching it slip past his perfect lips. “Fuck-”

Nigel dropped his jaw and sucked Cal down slowly, groaning around the feeling of his cock as he lathed his tongue around the firm, smooth flesh in his mouth, then sucked again. Cal groaned above him, head tilted forward as he watched his cock slip in and out of Nigel’s lips slowly, every bit as erotic as it felt.

Staring up at Cal as he took him down to the back of his throat, Nigel choked himself a little as he clutched the back of Cal’s thighs.

“Nigel-” the word came out of Cal’s mouth quickly, holding himself up as he pushed his hips and cock down his throat, faster, harder, already feeling the swell of heat burning through his thighs where Nigel’s hands squeezed.

Nigel’s hands clenched, moving to Cal’s ass to pull him in deeper, harder, his tongue lashing around Cal’s cock as he sucked him, recklessly.  Cal’s grip dropped and he held to Nigel’s head and shoulder fast as he fucked his mouth with abandon, coming in white hot droves, panting, breathing hard.

Moaning hard, Nigel swallowed Cal, twice, then tugged at his balls as he finished, grunting around him until Cal pulled back, and crawled off his shoulders, flushed.

Nigel licked his lips, slowly, and stared up at Cal with a gleam in his eyes. “Think you could get used to that?”

“Yes,” Cal said with wavering, rough voice. He took Nigel into hand again, fisting him.

Nigel swore, and watched Cal’s hand, then his face, focusing on his beautiful lips. “Ever wanted to try giving one?”

Cal reached behind him and turned the water off, leaving the tub draining quicker now, he got down between Nigel’s legs, and stared at his cock hungrily. He’d never thought about it until now, but Nigel had a habit of making him want to do reckless and new things. “I won’t be very good.”

“I’ll be the fucking judge of that,” Nigel purred, hair wet and slicked back against his skull, which just made his features more dramatically handsome than before.

Swallowing down the dryness in his throat, Cal curled himself into as much of a ball as he could, then tub was only so large, and hardly meant for two men. He tried from many positions to get comfortable enough before he gave up, and stood and got towels.

“Let's get out first and then I'll try.” Cal wrapped himself in a towel and then leaned to help Nigel out and cover him in one too.

Nigel chuckled, and let Cal help him up, then kissed his lips, soundly, when he was close enough, hands gripping Cal’s ass again. “You have a perfect ass, Blue Eyes…”

“And you are very drugged,” Cal said, able to feel Nigel's erection against his hip when he pulled him closer. He shuffled then out of the bathroom and into his very minimal bedroom, blinds closed.

Nigel felt pain shoot up his leg as he leaned on Cal, kissing him slowly and deeply as they made it to the bed, and fell onto it, in a tangle of hot, clean limbs. Where Nigel was passionate and careless, Cal tried to be careful, gently moving Nigel up the bed as they kissed, worried he’d re-injure the other man.

Nigel pulled Cal up, closer, and wound his good leg around his hips as his longish, ashy hair soaked Cal’s pillow on the bed. Their bodies rubbed together slowly, hot and bare.

Cal took a moment and pulled back, letting his eyes  _ really _ trail Nigel’s body, bruised but tanned to golden, the silvery, wiry hairs on his chest cast a vast contrast between shades, and Cal couldn’t help but run fingers of both hands up his stomach to his chest, allowing himself the pleasure of feeling the other man out. He leaned and kissed Nigel again passionately, hand between their hips to stroke Nigel’s cock slowly.

Nigel groaned, softly at the touch, and canted his hips into Cal’s hand, enjoying the feeling of Cal looking him over like that before the long, hot kiss. Cal’s hands were calloused, and strong, the stroke of one around his cock sent shivers up Nigel’s spine.

Kissing down Nigel’s jaw to his neck, Cal made his way to the other man’s chest, pressing lips against collar bones and nipples as he went, rough hands working Nigel over as he did, taking his time to get to know his body crevice by crevice, every inch.

Cal’s hands, his lips, his slow exploration felt luxurious, to Nigel. He’d expected a quick, fumbling encounter, but relaxed back into the attention with a surprised smile in his eyes as he watched Cal. “I love those fucking hands of yours,” he whispered, arching into them everywhere they went.

As nervous and awkward as felt, he also knew the best way to overcome was to dive in and explore what it was he didn’t understand yet. Nigel felt like the art he used to study to understand people better, like a sculpture, and all he wanted to do was get to know the subject body and soul. Cal’s hands slid up Nigel’s sides as he kissed the other man’s hip gently, and then lower, taking in the his scent mixed the freshness of clean soap.

“Tell me if I’m doing anything wrong, or going too slow,” Cal said, big blue eyes gazing up at Nigel, who looked like a large house cat enjoying royal treatment.

“Perfect so far,” Nigel purred, and sighed deeply as he ran his hands over Cal’s short, dark hair and his shoulder. “Not a single complaint, Blue Eyes, trust me,” he whispered, and touched Cal’s jaw, then his lips, heart pounding.

Cal gazed up at Nigel for a second, bit his thumb lightly, then bent low to kiss his thigh, then the base of his cock, lathing his tongue around it to take in Nigel’s taste, to get used to him, before dragging it up to the tip.

Nigel groaned at that, deep in his chest when Cal’s tongue stroked his cock. It was hot, and wet, nice and wide, and the soft rasp of his tastebuds against Nigel’s sensitive nerves felt good.

Taking a deep breath, Cal licked around the tip, tasting Nigel’s salty precome, and then wrapped his lips around it, slowly taking him in, trying to get used to the new sensation of having his mouth  _ full _ of cock.

“Fuck-” Nigel moaned, and petted his fingers over the back of Cal’s head as his eyes closed in bliss, “yeah. Perfect, Just like that, suck … nice and slow…”

Cal chuckled a little, managing to hum against Nigel’s cock as he took him down further, as far as he could drop his jaw to take him in, sucking and petting his tongue over the tip, while his hands gripped Nigel’s hips, thumbs caressing over the jutting bone there.

Nigel pushed himself up on one arm to watch and groaned at the feeling and sight of Cal leaning to torture him just like that, with his tongue, his mouth, and those rough hands of his. “Fuck … good at this, keep going,” Nigel purred, his cock throbbing in Cal’s hot mouth. He scraped his blunt nails over Cal’s scalp, slowly, then down the back of his neck.

Encouragement was key, so Cal kept up what he was doing, ever slowly, bobbing down and around, holding Nigel’s erect cock in one hand as he licked over and over, and then sucked again, experimenting as he swallowing down more of his precome.

“Cal-” Nigel gasped, every slow suck and stroke of Cal’s tongue enough to make him overheat, and moan the other man’s name, stunned at how good someone’s first time could be. “Just like that, gorgeous, lick … fuck, yes … good…”

His jaw was tiring fast, but Cal did as Nigel seemed to like, and licked, lathed, and sucked in turns, twisting his tongue and mouth down around his thick length, over and over, rubbing the knotted nerves at the tip with the rough bed of his tongue.

Nigel moaned, low and rough, loudly, and gripped Cal’s neck, hard, at the back. “Fuck- There-” he gasped, heat starting to pool in the small of his back, spreading fast, body tightening.

Cal in turn gripped Nigel’s hips and tugged him in closer, feeling his body tense around him and his cock start to throb and pulse against his tongue, he lathed and bobbed faster.

“Fuck,  _ fuck _ , going to come,” Nigel moaned, writhing under Cal’s hungry mouth as he felt his body split apart at the seams with pleasure, and gasped loudly as he exploded, his muscular body arching off the bed for it. 

Before Cal could pull back, or decide not to take Nigel’s orgasm into his mouth, he felt the spilling liquid against his tongue and throat, and immediately pulled back back, hand over his mouth as he rushed to the bathroom to spit. It wasn’t the taste, it was  just…  _ surprising _ and hot down the back of his throat, and set of a reaction he couldn’t control.

Nigel’s moan faded into a gasp when Cal jumped off of him, and ran away, and Nigel blinked as he watched Cal disappear, still gasping from the orgasm Cal just gave him, breathless and sweaty. “Cal?”

"J-just a second,” Cal called, and waited, and when he returned he was flushed. He knew he’d get a lot of backlash, as Nigel seemed the type to never let him live this down. “Sorry…”

“What … what happened?” Nigel asked, head tilted as he caught his breath.

“Caught me off guard,” Cal murmured, sliding into clean boxers, and then went to get Nigel’s pills for him and a glass of water. He returned, handing them over to the other man. “You’re due.”

NIgel popped the pills and swallowed the water, then pulled Cal into bed, licking his lips. “I … told you it was going to happen…”

“Yes, but it happened  _ directly _ after,” Cal tried to reason, letting Nigel pull him into the bed. Cal would have to face the Movement soon, but for now, he’d help Nigel get settled.

Nigel laughed, and pulled Cal over him in bed, and looked up at his face, smirking. His eyes, however, were surprisingly tender. “Did you hate it?”

“I gagged,” Cal admitted, since he had tasted Nigel from his own hand prior, it was just a bad reaction. He straddled Nigel’s hips, gazing down at him, glad for the quiet and privacy.

“Next time, pull off when I warn you,” Nigel murmured, and pulled Cal down to give his lips a kiss. The fuzzy, warm feeling in Nigel’s chest would have been frightening, if he had not been able to blame it on the painkillers.

“Oh, you think there’s a next time?” Cal teased, a little, brick-by-brick, pieces of his exterior were being taken down by Nigel.

Nigel chuckled, and kissed Cal again as he brought him closer, arms around his back, under Cal’s arms. “Christ, I fucking hope so…”

Cal had no idea how they got here, but the path here had been one he felt very guided on, even now. Nigel had been a miracle find, and miracle to save. He kissed Nigel deeper, hands in his ashen hair. “You might get lucky.”

“Already did, Blue Eyes,” Nigel whispered against Cal’s lips, tingling all over, and smitten with the man he had never expected to feel more than raw lust for, and yet, there they were.   



	4. Chapter 4

The next morning, Cal let Nigel sleep and he went to the mess hall to pick up food since his unit didn’t have a lot of food at the moment. He picked up a few things and brought them back, and set out to make a tofu scramble for him and Nigel. He left the wheelchair by Nigel’s bedside.

Nigel slept in, then woke to a nightmare of the Earth shaking hard where he slept. He bolted awake, grabbing for the spot where Cal slept, only to find it empty, and the Earth still. Heart pounding, Nigel looked around, and realized Cal had left. The wheelchair waited at the bedside, but there was no note, no sign he would be back. 

“Cal!?” Nigel called out, with a sinking heart, a note of alarm in his deep, rough morning voice.

Cal set the pan on very low and covered it to cook. He wiped his hands on a towel, and took a few quick strides to the bedroom. It was his place, after all, where would he go? With brows raised, he smiled at Nigel when he saw him awake. “Right here. I was making breakfast.”

Nigel felt his face and shoulders relax when Cal looked in at him, and he nodded, rubbing his face as he woke up a little more. “Oh, I … “ Nigel was not a morning person, it took his brain several hours to get running smoothly without a strong coffee, or something far more potent than that, and he realized he looked like a fucking idiot.

Cal hadn’t noticed, or didn’t seem to anyway. He walked over and brushed some hair from Nigel’s eyes, the rest of it messy, and honestly he looked somehow more relatable like this. “Want to get up? You can use the chair, or I can help you to the bathroom if you want first?”

Nigel just nodded, and reached out to hang onto Cal to get out of bed, more than happy to get his arms around Cal’s solid shoulders, again. He stood, slowly, much more sore today than he had been yesterday, which felt like a blur.

“I’ll get you to the bathroom, and find you something to wear,” Cal suggested, assuredly, and slowly walked with Nigel to the bathroom, taking it slow with every step. He helped him at to the toilet, to do whatever he had to do, and then left for a minute to go find him a wear of sweats he was sure might fit the other man.

When Cal came back, he helped Nigel into the pants, fitting over his cast first, and then the other leg, and up his hips, where they sat a little snug, but clung everywhere else.

“Thanks, gorgeous,” Nigel murmured, and pulled Cal closer for a kiss after his pants were settled on his hips, both hands cupping Cal’s face for a moment. Nigel looked at him, as though to make sure he was real, then kissed his forehead, fondly. “What’s for breakfast?”

Cal smiled against Nigel’s lips, and then looked down as his forehead was kissed, unable to believe even after Nigel’s haze of painkillers faded, he’d still want to be with him. Cal was expecting to be ignored, honestly. “A scramble.”

“What the fuck is a scramble?” Nigel asked, with a yawn against Cal’s temple before he rested his head against Cal’s, still half-asleep, like a bear that had trouble shaking off his hibernation.

“Veggies and tofu,” Cal said, carefully, not wanting to scare his large bear away yet. “I’ve brewed some tea for us, if you’d like too. Orange juice otherwise, fresh squeezed by the mess hall kitchen.”

Nigel cracked his eyes open again and looked at Cal with a tilt of his head. The creases of the pillow-case were still pressed into his cheek, and he seemed to give up and rest his head against Cal’s hair instead of trying to be more awake at the moment. “Tofu?”

“Tofu. Good source of protein.” Cal gently moved Nigel, arms under him, and shuffled him from the bathroom to the small table by the small kitchen unit. He settled him into a chair and handed him a glass of orange juice and a few of his pain pills. Then, Cal served up the scrambles on to plates, and set them down. He handed Nigel a fork. “We’re mostly all vegan here, save for a few who do dairy.”

Nigel let Cal move him, and swallowed the pills dry, then gave Cal an incredulous look as he took the fork, and looked at his body. “Wait, wait. Tofu is … not a fucking animal? I thought it was some kind of fucking small pig or something! How can you not eat meat?”

“It’s plant based. It’s soy,” Cal explained, sitting across from Nigel, mostly watching him eat, wary himself about doing the same just yet, “We don’t believe in harm to animals. Everything has a life force.”

Nigel pulled an incredulous face at Cal, and sighed heavily, then drank his tea in a long slurp, half the cup at once, and looked at Cal again, still wrapping his head around the concept, chin in one hand. “You’ve got a fucked up rich-person way of starving yourself to death,” he laughed, and tried a bit of the scramble, skeptically. “Everything dies. Everybody dies. Might as well be tasty.”

Cal licked his bottom lip and then tugged it between his teeth past the top one, brows furrowed slightly as the light left his vivid blue eyes, hoping to have shown Nigel a new way of living life, to see life as something wonderful, and not taken for granted. “Do I look starved, Nigel?”

Nigel smirked through his messy, ashen hair and looked Cal over. “I forget, show me again?” he flirted, and drank his tea again with a smile.

“Eat, your memory is failing you,” Cal quipped, a little guarded, but forked some of his scramble into his mouth, slowly.

“This isn’t the worst. If you didn’t tell me I would have thought there was something in here,” Nigel murmured as he swallowed, then sat back, thinking about it. “But, alright, look, I used to know a couple of guys who used to farm. They harvested their crops with big fuck-off machines that cut the plants off and shot them into some bin or something right? That’s what they do to these beans or whatever the fuck?” Nigel asked, starting to wake up.

“Tofu is…” Cal sighed, chewing another bite as he thought over how best explain it to Nigel. “It’s like cheese made from soy milk. Soy milk is made from the soybean.”

Nigel nodded, a spark of recognition in his dark eyes. He knew what cheese was, that made it easier to understand, and he took another mouthful and swallowed. “Okay, so you eat this because you don’t want to kill any animals?”

“Yes,” Cal said, slowly chewing another bite when he was sure that Nigel was staring at him as he did. “Some members prefer to be only vegetarian, so they can use butter, eggs, milk… It’s a choice, but animals meat we avoid.”

“These farm guys I knew said that their machines used to run over a fuck-ton of little animals: gophers, rats, everything, they’d get beheaded by the blades and chucked into the bucket with the plants. So … what I’m saying is don’t you kill more animals with this shit than you would by eating one pig for a fucking week?” Nigel asked.

“We grow most of our food here. Gardens we tend to ourselves. Tofu, some of us make it, or rely on local farmers that don’t use machinery and they believe in organic and natural ways of farming. It takes longer, but it’s appreciated.” Cal knew what Nigel was trying to do, but Cal hadn’t touched meat products since he was five years old, no matter how often his mother had tried to shove bacon down his throat when he saw her.

Nigel nodded, and shrugged his shoulders, then stretched in his chair with a yawn, arms behind his head, which showed off his tanned chest. “You garden? Is that where you got your callouses?”

“Sometimes. I helped build this compound, by hand, help build all these buildings, houses,” Cal explained as he sipped his herbal tea, glad to see Nigel at least ate some of the food he’d made him. “That’s what I was doing in your country.”

Nigel had starved too often as a boy to turn down free food, no matter what it was. He looked at Cal’s hands with a little smirk, and moved closer to take one of them, raising it so that he could nip at Cal’s fingertips with his teeth. “Lucky me.”

Immediately, Cal’s blue eyes blew dark with lust, Nigel’s teeth sending shockwaves of it down through his spine to his groin. His fingers curled slightly against Nigel’s teeth and lips as he bit the inside of his cheek. “Are you finished eating?” he asked, distracted.

“Yeah, for now,” Nigel purred, and tugged Cal closer, in his chair, strong enough that he could pull Cal and the chair over, across the floor, and kissed Cal’s neck.

Cal’s hand went to Nigel’s hair, as if to pull him off, but instead his fingers clenched around the newly clean strands, and Cal craned his neck to the side to get more of the feeling of Nigel’s chapped lips against his skin, sensitive and burning hot on contact.

Nigel moaned, slowly, and nipped at Cal’s throat, leaving tiny purple marks in his wake as he moved his mouth up to Cal’s delicate ear, which he bit and sucked slowly, then pulled Cal into his lap, the pain pills doing their job.

Cal was well built, but still lithe, smaller than Nigel, and was pulled easily into his lap, straddling him in the small chair. His hands gripped his shoulders, as he nuzzled his ear into Nigel’s lips, shuddering at the way it made goosebumps grace his flesh.

“I thought you left this morning,” Nigel whispered against Cal’s ear, and bit the lobe, tugging at it after he kissed it.

“Leave my own house?” Cal whispered back, turning his head to kiss Nigel properly, lips colliding into a promise that he wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t leave Nigel here alone without telling him.

Nigel kissed Cal back, hungrily, with passion, and started to undo his shirt so quickly that he popped a button off in his haste.

Nigel was like a drug for Cal, and when he got close to him, he couldn’t help himself. It was the best feeling, and like nothing he’d ever felt before, equal parts lust and caring-- at least on his part. Cal shed the stuffy light green shirt to the floor, sucking on Nigel’s tongue with a groan.

Cal was so buttoned up in that shirt, so fucking proper and clean looking that Nigel just had to mess him up a little more. He groaned and slid his hands over Cal’s back, to his shoulders, down his arms, exploring his muscles as he sucked Cal’s tongue. “Not going to leave because I’ve freaked you the fuck out?”

“Freak me out?” Cal asked between hot slides of tongue between their mouths, breathing out heavily, unable to get enough of Nigel’s touch, like every piece of Cal was wanted.

“Scare you off,” Nigel whispered against Cal’s mouth undoing his pants as he kissed him between words, one hand cupping the small of Cal’s toned back.

Cal was just coming into his sexuality at full height with Nigel, letting go, being passionate for once where it counted outside of The Movement. If anything, Cal felt Nigel as his muse. “You’ve awakened me,” Cal whispered, biting the words into Nigel’s lips, lifting his hips as his pants slid down part of his ass.

Nigel pulled Cal’s pants down, hands smoothing over the rise and slope of his muscular ass and thighs with a heavy sigh, then kissed Cal’s throat again. “So much more to show you, Blue Eyes,” he whispered, beginning to stroke Cal’s cock.

Senses on fire, Cal kicked off the pants, naked in Nigel’s lap, yet again, running hands down over his shoulders and chest, exploring all the things he found attractive about Nigel that he could touch, things he never knew he’d like about a man. “Tell me.”

Nigel’s nipples were hard under the thick cloud of silvery blonde chest hair over them, and his skin was flushed with a healthy glow as he worked Cal over with one hand, staring up at him. “There’s a spot inside you that will make you come so hard you’ll feel like you’ve turned inside out with pleasure,” Nigel whispered.

It was sort of hard to believe, but the look on Nigel’s face when he said it made Cal buck his hips in expectation. “And you want to find that spot for me?” Cal asked, fingers exploring and tweaking Nigel’s nipples, then cascading over them with his palms.

“Of fucking course I do, I want to watch your face while I stroke it, and your cock at the same time, watch you grind yourself back on my fingers because you can’t get enough of it,” Nigel whispered, and then gave Cal’s ass a playful slap. “Grab some oil and I’ll show you everything.”

Oh, Nigel meant right then. Cal’s face looked distant for a second, a confused and bewildered look on his face, and then his crawled off Nigel’s lap to find cooking oil from the cupboard.

Nigel smirked at the way Cal seemed to need a moment to force himself into action, and watched him rummage for oil through the cupboards, naked. “You have the most perfect ass I’ve ever seen, on a man.”

Cal leaned up on his toes and pulled it from a high shelf, and then walked back over in just his socks now. “On a man,” he repeated, head tilted almost expectantly.

“On anyone,” Nigel clarified, and reached out his arms to pull Cal back into his lap for a long, deep kiss.

Cal hadn’t minded, women were far different than men anyway. He slid back onto Nigel’s lap, claiming his mouth with a heated kiss, pressing down into it with his tongue, riling the passionate nerves in his body into blissful lust.

Nigel groaned and pulled the bottle of oil out of Cal’s hands, then unscrewed it behind Cal’s back as they kissed. He lathered the oil over his own hands, warming it, slowly, and began to massage Cal’s back with slow, strong movements of his hands.

Cal was tense everywhere, clear that he carried the weight of his work on his shoulders. He groaned as Nigel’s fingers seemed to dig out spots with barely even touching him, turning him more pliable under his hands.

“So tense,” Nigel murmured, and worked his fingers into Cal’s muscles, smoothing his way down his spine as he unlocked rock hard muscles, and made his way to Cal’s ass, which he kneaded slowly as he kissed Cal’s mouth, winding tongues together before he bit Cal’s lower lip, and rubbed his hands with more oil and teased one finger down the crack of Cal’s ass.

Shuddering against Nigel’s teasing, Cal kissed him harder for it, his mind working a mile a minute on what was happening, while his body was pressing for more attention, rocking forward against Nigel’s hips. “Nigel-”

“That’s it, nice and slow, don’t worry,” Nigel whispered, and circled his fingertip against the outside of Cal’s entrance, over every neglected nerve there, and watched his face as he did so, memorizing the reactions as they flitted over his features.

Cal pressed their foreheads together, just breathing as his whole body flushed, his thighs tensing up around Nigel’s, but didn’t dare ask him to stop as his cock grew harder against his hip, leaking onto Nigel’s stomach.

Nigel smiled at that, and kissed Cal’s throat as he kept teasing him with a slick finger, biting at Cal’s racing pulse. “Just the beginning,” he whispered, “already feels good?”. God, he loved guiding Cal through all of the firsts like this.

“Y-yes,” Cal managed to whisper, feeling himself start to fall apart in Nigel’s capable hands, craving things he never even knew existed until now. “Let’s move to the bed.”

“Anything you want,” Nigel purred, and kissed Cal’s mouth as he hung onto his shoulders to stand with him.

Cal slid off and helped Nigel to stand, and guided him back to the bedroom, hoping to be more comfortable there for them both. A bit of shuffling and then Cal stumbled back against the bed, careful not to tug Nigel with him, but guided him down.

Nigel laid back in the bed, on his side, and pulled Cal closer to him, hitching one of Cal’s thighs up around his own hips, then palmed his ass before he began to trace his oiled fingertip around the edge of Cal’s pucker. “Better?”

“Yes,”Cal said, facing Nigel now, he looped an arm under Nigel’s and over his shoulder, locking them together, hip to hip, chest to chest, his limbs humming with need under Nigel’s touch. “Much.”

“Agreed,” Nigel purred and very, very slowly coaxed the tip of his index finger inside Cal. He reached down with his other hand, and began to stroke Cal’s cock, distracting him a little.

Cal panted lightly against Nigel’s mouth, hips arching into the sensation of his finger, wanting and worrying all at once, blissed out as Nigel worked him over.

“That’s it, good, breathe…” Nigel coached Cal through it between kisses and bites and slipped his finger in, past the tight ring of muscle, then let Cal’s body adjust.

Licking the inside of Nigel’s mouth for that, Cal bucked back against his finger, effectively opening his hips up, taking a little more of him in, burning at first, but the pleasure was quickly overriding the pain.

Nigel hummed, and ran his thumb over the tip of Cal’s cock, spreading the precome over his head as he began to rock his wet finger inside, further with each rock, until his searching fingertip found the knot of sensitive spot that he was looking for. Nigel moaned at the discovery, and ran his fingertip over it, slowly.

Sparks seemed to flash before Cal’s eyes as Nigel pressed and rubbed just a little, and he felt himself keening back to get more, breath hitching as the pleasure increased ten fold. “Nigel, fuck-”

“There you go,” Nigel moaned, and stroked Cal’s cock with his other hand, smiling as he watched Cal’s face, the way the pleasure he felt seemed to make Cal almost fall apart at the first touch. “Now imagine my cock doing that,” he purred, lips against Cal’s delicate ear as he rubbed Cal’s prostate, slowly, deliberately.

Cal could hardly imagine  _ this _ happening right now, let alone the girth of Nigel’s cock slitting him open and beating against that spot over and over...He  grasped Nigel’s face and kissed him passionately as his body seemed to set fire, and Nigel was stroking the flame.

Nigel groaned into the kiss, and rubbed his fingertip over Cal’s prostate, caressing it over and over before he applied a little more pressure, and when Cal was ready, a second slick finger as they kissed.

Cal groaned with a slack jack, and then kissed Nigel harder, gasping as his body riled and coiled with heat, tensing through his thighs and lower. “I-”

“Come on, gorgeous, grind down, fuck yourself on my fingers,” Nigel whispered, breathless and dirty in Cal’s ear as he bent his fingers inside Cal, and rubbed the sensitive spot, stroking him with the other hand, encouraging him. “Is it good?”

Groaning, keening, Cal started to push back on Nigel’s fingers getting him further and further in it felt like, pressing those fingers tight against his prostate until finally Cal gasped, sucking in air and then tensing around Nigel's fingers in waves of pleasure as he spilled over his fingers.

“Just like that, yes, just like that, come on-” Nigel groaned, and watched Cal as he broke, and came, shaking and squeezing around Nigel’s fingers buried deep inside his body. “Fuck, perfect, Cal, perfect,” Nigel praised as he kissed Cal’s throat while Cal gasped for breath, and let him ride it out.

After what felt like minutes, Cal finally slowed, and stilled, curled into Nigel, panting against his chest, sweaty. Nothing was ever going to be as nice as that again, and he knew Nigel had just ruined sex with anyone else  _ but _ him. He leaned and kissed Nigel’s neck, trailing fingers down his hip.

“There, breathe,” Nigel whispered as he very slowly eased his fingers from inside Cal, and released his cock to wrap both arms around Cal’s sweaty, warm back, and hold him. “You are fucking gorgeous when you lose control,” Nigel whispered.

Cal knew he was wound tight, and he had every right to be with the secrets he kept, the things he had done, and yet he had a feeling Nigel would understand completely and not even judge him. “You seem to have found the wrench to loosen me up.”

Nigel chuckled, and kissed Cal’s lips, slowly, nipping at and sucking them both before he nuzzled his face. “And that’s just my fingers, angel…”

Cal slid his hand down Nigel’s sweats, gripping his erection there, and gazing at him up close, growing bolder the more often they did this, learning. “What can I give you?”

Nigel smiled widely, and sighed at the feeling of Cal’s hand on his cock, then kissed his lips, hard. “More of that beautiful mouth of yours…”

Cal pushed Nigel onto his back, and rolled over him, slipping his sweats down his legs and got between them, more confident he’d be able to do this better this go around. He stroked Nigel slowly, taking in his scent that he now found intoxicating, and wrapped his tongue and mouth around Nigel’s cock.

“Fuck-” Nigel moaned, softly, and tipped his head back when Cal tongued him like that. He managed to spread his thighs without too much pain in his broken leg, and bent his whole leg, planting his heel in the sheets. “Love your mouth, Cal…” Nigel whispered, using Cal’s real name, and not a nickname for once.

The use of his name didn’t go unnoticed to Cal, who dipped down low and sucked hard, rewarding Nigel for it, sure it was first time he’d heard his name spill from his mouth since they met. He wrapped fingers around Nigel’s balls, giving a little tug.

Nigel gasped at the tug, and arched his back, able to feel the sensation all the way through his body. “Fuck … god, yes, do that again, harder-” Nigel gasped, and stared down at Cal, chest heaving.

Another tug, sharper this time, as Cal sucked Nigel down, to the hilt, choking himself to a beautiful crimson before easing back up again. His tongue wrapped around the tip, licking the pre-come out of the slit as he swallowed it, readying himself this time for more of Nigel.

Nigel stared down at Cal, not sure how the fuck he got so good at this so fast, but he wasn’t going to complain.

Cal considered what he liked about being blown, and tried to put it to use here, though different than receiving, the noises Nigel made as he wrapped his hand tight around his balls and  licked from base to tip was more than enough to urge him on to keep going. He ground the rough pad of his tongue against the head, against the sensitive part there, enticing more pre-come out of Nigel, and then swallowed him down again to the back of his throat.

“Christ-” Nigel swore, gasping the word roughly as he tried to grab at Cal’s short hair, able to feel his body start to flash hot and then tense, “Fuck, fuck, yes! Cal, your tongue- I’m gonna come, Cal-” he gasped out, trying to warn Cal as his nails scraped over the back of Cal’s neck and his hips bucked, sweat rolling down his chest.

Ready this time, Cal’s eyes watched Nigel start to lose control, and tugged hard on his balls, urging him to come in his mouth, opening his throat up to let salty taste slide down his throat easier this time.

Their eyes met, for a second, and Nigel groaned hard, arching almost off the bed with a stream of Romanian curses laced with Cal’s name, over and over as he came, shaking, in Cal’s mouth, unholy sounds escaping Nigel’s mouth as he did.

Cal swallowed a few times, harder than he thought it would be, but he managed, and then licked the tip once more and then, kissed Nigel’s hip, running hands up his sides before crawling up and over him. He could really get used to this, something stable, something normal.

Well, as normal as either of them were.

Nigel opened his eyes again, panting hard, and looked down at Cal as his hip was covered with kisses. He pulled Cal up to him, with strong arms, and kissed his lips with passion, sharing the taste between their mouths as he held Cal close. “Jesus Fucking Christ-” he whispered, between kisses, stunned.

Cal cupped Nigel’s face and kissed him back slowly, tongue wrapping around each other, as he savored the taste -- savored  _ Nigel _ like he wasn’t going to be there long. Cal knew at some point the man would be deported, and Cal would either go back with him or be forced to stay here after what he’d done.

“You’re a quick learner,” Nigel whispered, and held Cal to his chest with a happy sigh, stroking his hand up and down Cal’s spine, affectionately.

“Usually am,” Cal whispered back, resting their foreheads together, watching Nigel’s eyes.

Nigel’s eyes were warm and toffee-brown in this light as they looked at Cal, with wide pupils. This couldn’t last, Nigel wasn’t a fool, but he could feel himself getting more and more attached to Cal by the second. “Lucky me.”


	5. Chapter 5

Cal spent the next few days in and out of the bungalow caring for Nigel and dodging reporters, but sooner or later he had to give an interview at the gate to stave them off. Authorities were back, they wanted to take Nigel for deportation, but Cal managed to convince them to let him have another few weeks to heal. That gave Cal a little more time, though he knew ultimately that he’d have to take Nigel back.

There’d be no keeping him.

After a week, Cal helped Nigel out of the bungalow, convincing him to sit in one of the gardens for a while for some sunshine.

Nigel was walking on the cast now, using a crutch to help balance himself. He hobbled out, shirtless, in a pair of worn jogging pants, and seemed not to notice the commotion his appearance was causing, especially among the female commune members. “Where the fuck are we going?” he asked Cal.

“Just to the garden; it’s shaded,” Cal explained, walking with Nigel, one hand on his back to keep close contact. He was not unaware of the community members leering, but Cal couldn’t convince Nigel to keep a shirt on when the weather was so nice. At least he wrangled sweats on him.

Nigel smirked a little at the touch of Cal’s hand against his back, and looked over at him. They’d been tangled up in one another behind closed doors since Nigel’s arrival. “Taking me to a nice spot to shoot me like a wounded horse?” Nigel teased.

“Do I look like the sort of person who would do that?” Cal asked, but there was a curl of smile on his lips. “I thought it’d be a good idea if people didn’t assume the worst and saw you were fine. Besides… it’s nice out.”

“If they didn’t assume I was dead?” Nigel chuckled, and touched a leaf as they walked through the most wholesomely green gardens he’d ever seen.

“The last thing I need is Sarah on my ass about that--” Cal cut himself off and took Nigel’s hand, threading their fingers as they walked through apple trees slowly.

Nigel smirked, and squeezed Cal’s hand with his own. “What the fuck is she, your fucking boss?” he asked, with a shift of his jaw, craving a cigarette so much that he’d smoke one if he found a butt in the garbage.

“Childhood friend. She’s an 8R, but she’s slowly climbing the ladder to be a leader here. She seems to think she has a right to call me out on everything…” Cal sighed, and squeezed Nigel’s hand.

“What a bitch,” Nigel grumbled, and tossed his hair out of his eyes as they walked, looking through the shaggy strands at Cal. “Is she trying to get my ass out of here?”

“No. She’s worried it will cause issues, which it will. She’s helping to get you to stay here until you can go back home,” Cal explained, reaching with his free hand to move Nigel’s hair back out of his eyes. “She’s with me on helping and doing what we can. That’s what we’re about here.”

“Except when she’s calling you out on every fucking thing,” Nigel said, with a little sigh. “So, how much longer do we have?”

“A few weeks,” Cal said, well aware Sarah was calling him out because of choices he made that weren’t really  _ great _ choices, but they were gaining them more media coverage, and with that droves of people interesting in being  _ more. _

_ “ _ And then?” Nigel asked, with a set jaw, chest frozen as he held his breath, looking at Cal.

“I take you back home,” Cal sighed, canting his head up at Nigel, but a smile slipped over his lips. “Sarah will be left in charge here, and I’ll resume my post in Bucharest and oversee that compound.”

Nigel let out the breath he held, and squeezed Cal’s hand again. “Well, good, it could be fucking worse…”

“You say that like it’s not ideal,” Cal suggested.

“Am I allowed to come steal you away? See you?” Nigel asked, holding Cal’s hand tightly, almost possessively.

“I won’t be under lock and key, Nigel.” Cal rested his hand on Nigel’s hip, under the cover of the trees here, no one else around. “You can come see me any time. I’ll have to get out to recruit at some point.”

“But we can’t let anyone know…” Nigel said, knowing full well just from watching the closed off group that Cal dating a man, let alone an outsider was not going to be overlooked.

The Movement didn’t mind so much who anyone loved, but not being a believer was a huge...ordeal, especially for someone in Cal’s position. It wasn’t impossible, but it would take some hoops, and Cal had to be sure those hoops were worth going through. “For now.”

“For now?” Nigel asked, and raised an eyebrow, then stopped walking so he could focus on Cal, instead. “Something I should know about?”

“It’s matter of convincing, finding housing outside of the compound there. Lots of members live and marry non believers, I just have to make a case for you… for  _ us _ ,” Cal stated, explaining how things had to work, but really Nigel wouldn’t have to do anything.

Nigel had become defensive, hackles up for a moment as he imagined the ‘for now’ meant until Cal moved on. He blinked, surprised, and went silent as he realized Cal meant the exact opposite. “You want to fucking live with me?”

“We’re already living together,” Cal pointed out, head canted. “But we don’t have to. I can stay at the compound.”

“I didn’t say I don’t want to,” Nigel corrected, with a shake of his head. “I like the idea, but I’m eating meat, Blue Eyes.”

Cal shrugged his shoulders, pulling the already well fitting shirt tight over his chest as he did. “So long as you don’t think I’m eating meat with you.”

Nigel’s eyes went to the straining button on the front of Cal’s linen shirt, and he reached out to drag his finger over it, with a smirk. “Fine with me, angel. Eat whatever the fuck you like,” he smirked. “I’m on the menu…”

“You’re…” Cal smirked as he caught on as he said the word, and leaned in closer. “I’ll probably take you up on that.”

Nigel smiled more widely, and pulled Cal closer to him, then nipped at his jaw. “I don’t mind being the closest you’re going to get to having a steak,” he purred, and bit Cal’s ear, playfully.

Cal pressed palms into Nigel’s chest, looking up at him with big, vivid blue eyes under dark, thick lashes. His hair had grown in the weeks they had been there, no longer cropped short, but thicker, and starting to curl a little. “Truer than you know.”

Nigel chuckled, and reached up to touch Cal’s short, feathery curls as he kissed his lips, his other arm around Cal’s solid torso to keep him pressed close. “The kitchen’s always open, baby.”

Cal chuckled right back, and pressed their lips together again, secure in knowing they were alone here, but in a change of environment. “You’ll be okay with being vegan a few more weeks?”

Nigel grunted, and bit at Cal’s ears, like he was going to eat one of them out of desperation. “I’m going to phone for a fucking pizza and rob the delivery boy…”

“Good luck getting them in the gates,” Cal whispered, a smirk on his face that could be heard in his voice, and his arms slipped over Nigel’s shoulders, careful not to put too much weight on him.

“I have my ways,” Nigel chuckled, and kissed the smirk off of Cal’s lips, so in love that he  _ almost  _ didn’t even notice he hadn’t smoked since he’d been here. Almost. Cal, however, was just as addictive, if not more. He slid one hand down to Cal’s ass, cupping it with his palm and squeezing gently as he stroked their tongues together. 

Groaning into Nigel’s mouth, Cal steadying himself with one hand on his hip. “Don’t try to be sneaky around here,” Cal warned, quietly, against perfect lips.

“Or? Or I’ll be  _ punished _ ?” Nigel purred, teasingly, and stroked his palm down the back of Cal’s thigh, then back up over his ass, caressing the perfect curve of it.

“You’d like that too much,” Cal whispered, nosing against Nigel's jaw. “You couldn't hide it from me. You'd feel guilty and need to unburden.”

“Unburden?” Nigel asked, as he tipped his head back with sigh, and let Cal’s lips graze over his jaw, happily, basking in the attention like a cat in sunlight.

“It's when you confess something on your mind that might be keeping you feeling less than light. We unburden to go into our days without feeling guilt, or shame… whatever it might be. It helps us stay honest and open with each other,” Cal explained, very quietly between them, though honestly Cal had not unburdened to anyone since before Silas. He carrying around a heavy secret that was weighing him down.

Nigel tilted his head, and then opened his eyes to look down at Cal, with a touch of his large hand to the back of Cal’s head. “No fucking secrets, then? That’s it? That’s good. I don’t give enough of a shit about most things to lie about them, anyway. Too much fucking work. I’m an open book. You know what I am, don’t you? What I’m able to do?” Nigel murmured. He was a shameless creature, not one to hide what he did, what he wanted or liked. He took what he wanted, and didn’t apologize for it.

“I've had a few ideas,” Cal said, quietly, and looked up at Nigel, swallowing. He'd dealt with men like Nigel, though likely not worse.

Nigel cupped Cal’s face, looking into his eyes. “We’re not that different, you and me,” Nigel murmured, remembering the way Cal looked when he had blown up at him on the plane from Romania.

“How do you know?” Cal asked, obviously not wanting to see himself as the ‘salesman’ Silas had called him. It was far from the sort of man he thought he was, even if he used those tactics to gain a following for the Movement.

“I fucking know. I can see it in the way you shift your jaw, the way you hold your hands. In my world, if you can’t tell who can kill and who can’t, you’re a dead man,” Nigel replied.

Cal’s eyes flitted across Nigel’s features as he stilled and quieted. “You think I’m a killer?”

“I think you could, if someone was fucking dumb enough to push you the wrong way,” Nigel said, softly, and touched Cal’s face.

Taking a deep breath, Cal took Nigel’s hand and gently started to walk with him again, casually, slowly. “I used to have carpet in my bungalow.”

Nigel arched his eyebrows as they walked, and nodded slowly. “This house, here?” he asked, quietly.

Cal nodded, mimicking Nigel’s; “I tore it out. It...stained pretty badly and I couldn’t get it out.”

“It’s fucking impossible to get it all out, you did the right thing, Blue Eyes,” Nigel murmured, and looked at Cal, feeling oddly protective of him right now. “Did you burn it?”

“Yes.” Cal hadn’t even needed to say what he had done and Nigel knew, and this in and of itself was a relief, as Cal wasn’t yet ready to say it out loud. He looked over at Nigel, brows raised up as he canted his head.

“Good,” Nigel whispered, and kissed Cal’s forehead, tenderly. “What about the rest of it?”

“Buried,” Cal murmured, eyes flitting over the fences of the compound, remembering that day like it was just a week ago, the horrified look on Silas face, and the blur of alcohol and mud that came with it.

Nigel nodded, and cupped Cal’s face, then kissed his lips, softly, very sweetly, then rested their faces together. “How long ago was that?” he asked, gently. He knew, he could tell that Cal telling him about this was a first. There was no one else he trusted with it.

“Months,” Cal said, looking up close at Nigel with those big blue eyes of his, like a kid who had finally confessed to doing something they shouldn’t have. “Three maybe?” Cal stopped keeping track, honestly.

Nigel looked over at the spot where Cal had looked before, then back at Cal, and nodded. “No one’s said anything? No one’s been looking? There are signs of a dead body under soil, things I can do to fix that…” he murmured, whispering the words as he stroked his fingers over the back of Cal’s neck. He knew the weight of getting caught, how careful someone had to be in Cal’s situation, how fast it could all go bad, especially if Cal was all but living at the crime scene. Fuck, he could still be caught if someone asked questions, there was probably still evidence left that Cal didn’t know how to erase.    
  
It was a ways out, Cal had to drive the body out there, but it was still close enough… “No. He’s not really missing, yet. Sarah… suspects, but she hasn’t gotten to the truth yet.”   
  
“Can you take me there? Say it’s some spiritual fucking nature hike or something? Tell them I’m thinking of signing up, I need-” Nigel paused, struck with an idea, then smirked.“Tell them I’m troubled, and you have to take me somewhere nice and quiet, away from people, do your … stuff on me, then take me to the place,” Nigel whispered, with a glint in his eyes, a plan forming.

Cal watched Nigel for a second as the cogs turned, well aware the territory he was getting himself into, but really this probably wasn’t the worst Cal could do. “Okay.” Cal let go of heavy sigh and then lead Nigel back the way they came. “You’re going to have to try and look convincingly upset, so this works.” Cal didn’t need to convince anyone of things he was having to do, but taking Nigel out of the compound was going to be tricky.

“Okay, first, show me exactly where everything happened in your place,” Nigel said, as they got closer and closer to Cal’s cabin.

They approached the bungalow and Cal opened the door, and ushered Nigel in. The door was shut behind them, and Cal stood where he had the day it happened, a bit away  from a chair, and  table. “I stood here. Mary had come in and… yelled at me. She was angry with me, and threw a vase that hit the wall. She left, I went to pick it up and Silas walked in through the front door,” Cal explained, gesturing it to near where Nigel stood leaning on his crutch. “He called me fake, a salesman, a con artist… like my dad, and I stabbed him in the neck. I killed him. Right there.” 

  
Nigel listened, without an ounce of judgement, and pointed to the floor. “Right here? Bled all the fuck over, right? How far did the blood get, do you remember? This is important,” Nigel said, very seriously.

“How far?” Cal rubbed his hands together and tried to remember. Silas had reached for him, and dragged him down and toward the couch, where Cal now went to stand. “The couch, here. And then he dropped to the floor.” Cal motioned to the now bare wood floors. The couch had a blanket over it now.

  
Nigel hobbled over, and pulled the blanket back, inspecting the couch for blood, very closely. “Did any get on here? Did you scrub any out?” He asked, even smelling the cushions.

“I tried. I scrubbed as much as I could, cleaner and all that,” Cal explained, but he was pretty sure Nigel would find  _ something _ .

“Okay, okay,” Nigel said, and stood up with a sigh, then pulled Cal close with one arm to kiss his lips, twice, then looked him in the eye as he cupped his face with one hand. “Now, you’re going to go do something out there, do some … I don’t know, some fucking work or whatever. You’ll know when I want you to come here. Just remember,” Nigel said, and looked Cal in the eye, “my punishment is going to be that I have to bury it in the woods. Got it? That’s what you’re going to make me do:  _ bury it in the woods and give it a funeral. _ ”

“Bury it in the woods,” Cal repeated,  but his brows furrowed in slightly. “Bury what exactly? I’m… they’re going to ask later.”

“You’ll see,” Nigel said, and kissed Cal again, on the lips. “Okay, go on, I’ll see you soon, gorgeous..”

Cal gripped Nigel’s shirt and kissed him properly one more time, and then left to go make his rounds he should be doing anyway, checking on everyone.

  
***

An hour later, one of the 1R recruits jogged up to Cal, confused. “Um, Sir? There’s a delivery truck at the gates, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be here?” she asked, wide-eyed and nervous, a paper from the delivery in hand.

Cal blinked and turned to the recruit, but instead of asking what sort of truck, Cal went to check instead. He had to remember that Nigel was likely behind this. He made his way to the front gates, stopping just in front of them to get a good look at the truck.

The truck was from a butchery, and two men unloaded a dead, raw, whole pig from the back, and carried it to the gate. “Where should we put this? It’s paid for, we have to deliver it, we can’t take it back to the shop now that it’s been out for this long,” one of the men explained.

“Excuse me?” Cal scowled back toward the bungalows, Nigel had to know that this would actually piss Cal off a little and upset the community. Maybe that was the point, to be authentic and all. Cal breathed out roughly. “Put it in… my car,” he told the man at the gate. “I’ve got to go grab a Romanian.”

Cal’s bungalow door opened, and Nigel staggered out. He looked drugged, like he was on too many pain pills at once, had a joint hanging from his lips, and was shirtless and  _ covered  _ in blood from gashes on both wrists. He looked like he had bathed in blood, enough blood for a murder was dripping from his hands.    
  
He slumped against the front door, and a woman screamed at the sight of him. “FUCK this fucking place, I’m going to roast a fucking pig before I die!” Nigel snarled, knife in hand, tears in his eyes, disoriented.

Staring in disbelief for a second, Cal rushed over and waved a hand for the lady to calm down. The doctor was already on her way, and Cal waved her off too .”I’ve got it,” Cal told them, and went to Nigel, storming up the steps of the small house and looking him over. “What did you do?” The veins in his forehead bulged a little as Cal tried to keep calm, that Nigel had this planned, but seeing the blood, the look in his eyes…

“Nigel…”

Nigel dropped the knife, with a clatter, and wavered on his feet, then slumped against Cal. The inside of the bungalow was smeared in blood, the floor and couch coated in it, pills strewn all over the place. Nigel hid his face against Cal’s neck, back heaving, and then whispered to him, “I think … I need some stitches,” he whispered, “I had to … get enough blood…”

“I can’t make you bury a pig like this,” Cal whispered back harshly, the doctor still wavering behind him, but far enough away she couldn’t hear their conversation. Cal helped Nigel to stand, and nodded the doctor over. “Stitches, now!”

The doctor had run for her kit, gloves already on, and sat Nigel down in the bloodied house, horrified at the state of it. She packed Nigel’s wrists with layers and layers of gauze as Nigel stared at the floor, sullen and speechless, looking drugged out of his mind. “Luckily it looks like he didn’t hit any arteries, Cal,” she sighed, worried, and looked up at Nigel’s downcast face. “I don’t think we have to rush him anywhere, I can stitch him up here.”   
  
She set to work, and Nigel looked at the floor, as though ashamed of himself, tears rolling down his bloodied cheek, then looked up at Cal as the doctor worked, a little more light in his eyes.

Cal stayed very quiet as Nigel got stitched back up, calming himself with reminders that none of it was real, Nigel did what he had to do to make things right where Cal messed up.

Almost half an hour later, the doctor put the last stitch in Nigel’s wrist, and wrapped them tightly after making sure he was calmer, not actively suicidal anymore, and tried to speak a few words of encouragement to him before she stood to talk to Cal, quietly.

“He’s lost a lot of blood, but the wounds weren’t actually that bad, thankfully. He must have been here, bleeding for a long time. I’m so sorry for your poor house, but the pain pills slowed his blood pressure, he didn’t hit any arteries, he got very, very lucky. I think he just needs some emotional support. Physically, he’ll be okay,” she sighed, heavily, and looked back at the mess. “I’ll get some help, we can come clean this up for you…”

The worst of this was that it really made Cal look terrible, but he had to trade one for another, he thought, and nodded. “Thank you, I’ll… take him for a drive, with his pig and we’ll dispose of it. Proper burial.”

The doctor nodded and left, and Cal went to help Nigel to his feet. “Let’s go for a drive, Nigel.”

Nigel nodded, and could see they were being watched by curious members through the windows, stared at with concern and wonder as the previously violent, deranged man seemed to let Cal hug him and help him up. “Sure thing…” he sighed, and looked at the mess he’d made. “Fuck …”

“Someone will clean it up,” Cal reassured Nigel, grabbing a towel first and wiping him down and then wrangled a t-shirt on him, gently.

“Are you … kicking me out?” Nigel asked, after the shirt was smoothed down over his chest, and swallowed hard, well aware the followers on the porch were listening.

“No, we’re going to go clear our heads, and put our poor pig to rest,” Cal answered, and lead Nigel out slowly, letting him use him as a crutch this time, careful down the steps, toward the car where the pig was wrapped in a tarp and waiting in his back seat.

Nigel glared at a few of the followers who were staring at him, and they all looked away as Cal helped him into the car, and shut the door. He looked down at his hands, wrists aching as the pills wore off again. God, he was going to be fucking sore for this. 

Cal drove them out of the compound, through the back entrance, and through the woods, quiet until they were nearly there, looking for the exact spot. He parked and looked over at Nigel. “They’re going to move you to another bungalow, you know. Sarah will see me as unfit to care for you.”

Nigel smiled over at Cal, and shook his head at him, dark eyes gleaming. “I’ll take care of that, don’t fucking worry,” he assured Cal, and touched his arm with one hand. “I scared the shit out of you, didn’t I?”

“You worried me,” Cal answered quickly, and got out of the car. He opened the hatch of his car and started to tug the large pig out of it.

Nigel watched and helped as much as he could, given his state, then pulled the shovel out of the back of the car, and closed the door. “It’s got to be in the exact same spot, right over it,” he sighed, and wished for the millionth time that he had a cigarette. “If the cops came with body sniffing dogs, and they dug, and found this? Well, it’s a dead pig, of course the dogs thought it was a body. False fucking alarm.”

Cal flopped the pig on the ground, and started to wander around, looking for the spot, but that night was such a blur, he could hardly remember. “Uh… well…” He licked his lips. “I might have been plastered out of my mind when I buried him,” Cal admitted, not looking at Nigel’s eyes as he started to pace the spots, looking for just the softest spots where dirt had been overturned more recently than most other places.

“Where the fuck would you get a drink around here?” Nigel asked, irritated, and hobbled to a spot where the earth seemed to sag just a little, and a ring of mushrooms grew in a wide, broken oval shape. He tamped the earth with his shovel, and nodded. “Right here. The gases make the dirt sink in like this if you don’t break the abdomen open before you bury him. Dead giveaway.”

Cal glowered at Nigel but didn’t answer the first bit, instead he shrugged. Cal was a smart man, but he never thought he’d have to be smart enough to bury a dead body and get away with it. “I’ll dig,” he said, taking the shovel from Nigel, and started to overturn earth.

Nigel sat on a nearby log, with a sigh, and a spinning head, and watched Cal dig. “Are you fucking pissed at me?” he asked, bluntly, confused.

“No,” Cal said, digging deeper and deeper. “I’m… a little stressed out right now. I-” A drink did sound good, really good. He looked over at Nigel, pretty sure they’d both be happily drunk together. It was tempting.

Nigel raised his eyebrows at Cal, encouraging him to go on. “I had to cover the floor with blood, it had to be human. Once it’s cleaned up, the police can’t get dna worth a damn, all they’ll be able to say is there was someone’s blood there. Pretty much every fucking person there saw it was mine,” he said, nodding at a wrist.

“I got why you did it,” Cal snapped, immediately regretting that he had and wiped a hand over his face, rubbing to try and calm himself. “I’m… fucking grateful.”

Nigel shot Cal a look when he snapped, and then shifted his jaw with a sigh. He had literally  _ bled  _ for this, and Cal acted like Nigel ruined his favorite shirt. “Right.”

“Sorry,” Cal said taking a few deep breaths, “I wasn’t expecting to see you bleeding all over the fucking place. I got… thrown off.”

Nigel’s hard glare softened a little when Cal said that, and he stood, then managed to move over to Cal where he stood, and touched his face. “I know what I’m doing. It was only a couple of veins, and an hour’s time. It looked bad, I know,” he whispered, able to see that Cal was really, deeply bothered by the sight of Nigel covered in blood. “I’m fine. I’ve had lots worse, you’ve seen my scars.”

“I’m going to have to put you into a class,” Cal said, knowing Nigel hated all the ‘hippie shit’ they did. “Just to keep them off you, off us. It’s not bad, you do some meditation and say you’re getting better and no longer have thoughts of self harm, a lot of people bullshit their way through it.”

Nigel rolled his dark eyes and sighed at the thought, but then shrugged. “One fucking class. Fine,” he muttered, then rested his forehead against Cal’s, with his eyes closed. “I’m so pissed I don’t get to eat this pig.”

“Keep that pent up for later,” Cal said, feeling his heart racing under his skin, but slowly it was coming down. “Let’s bury it and go.”

“Alright,” Nigel agreed, able to feel Cal’s pounding heart through his shirt, and began to realize Cal wasn’t just keeping him around for the sex. Not if his heart was still hammering in his chest like that this long after the unpleasant (but highly orchestrated) surprise. He kissed Cal on the lips with that realization, sweetly, then gave him as much of a hug as he could manage.

Cal calmed a little more on the hug, and closed his eyes as their lips met for a moment, and palmed down Nigel’s chest. “Okay.” He let go to finish digging the hole, piling dirt over and over to the side. “How far down?”

“About a foot over the body,” Nigel said, not able to help much with his healing wrists. He watched Cal, contemplating the way Cal reacted, the flash of utter panic and then worry so strong it became anger when he thought Nigel might really have been hurt. He swallowed, and licked his lips, starting to reach a realization of his own. 

Nigel didn’t bleed for just  _ anyone _ , after all.  “I bet they’ll have the house cleaned up when we get back.”

“They are efficient,” Cal nodded, still digging, and it would take some time, but it was so much easier this time than it had been when he buried Silas the first time. He dug, the hole getting bigger and deeper as he did, and Cal had to look up at Nigel. “Why  _ did _ you help me?” He knew Nigel didn’t have to do anything, he could have left Cal to swim around in his mistakes forever.

Nigel ran his tongue over the edges of his teeth, then licked his lips as he looked down at Cal where he stood in the grave. “What can I say? I’m a fucking romantic …” Nigel murmured, but kept looking at Cal’s eyes, unable to tear himself away from them, utterly caught. 

“One of us has to be I guess,” Cal said, shoveling out more dirt, now covered in it, a light mist was starting to linger in the air as the sun went down.

Nigel chuckled, and watched as Cal dug deeper and deeper. With every shovel of dirt heaped on the Earth next to him, Nigel realized why he almost drained his body of blood to cover up a sloppy murder, why he ranted and raved in front of a village about a dead pig. It wasn’t reckless lust, … he loved Cal. He fucking loved him. It wasn’t something that was becoming, it already  _ was.  _ Cal Roberts: irritable mystic with a terrible temper, and a homicidal streak … Nigel’s heart was completely settled on him. Well,  _ fuck _ .    
  
“You’re not a romantic, huh? Stop digging there, you’re getting close. You don’t want them to touch in case they pull up the pig to look at it,” Nigel said, looking down at Cal.

Tossing the shovel up, Cal climbed out, covering himself in dirt that clung to him now, sweaty. He went and dragged the pig over and pushed it in, and then jumped back down to position it right. “There?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Nigel nodded, and shook his head at the loss of all that potential meat. “Let’s cover it up and go home, you’re fucking filthy,” he chuckled, and offered Cal a hand out of the hole.

Cal carefully took the help, using more of his own strength not to hurt Nigel, and finally got out. He started to fill hole and looked over his shoulder at Nigel. “Hungry?” There were things Cal wouldn’t do ever, and then there were things he would do for Nigel.

“Of course I’m fucking hungry, I’m burying a hundred kilos of perfectly good bacon and ham,” Nigel muttered as he kicked a pile of dirt into the hole with his cast, stomach growling.

“You’re burying?” Cal chuckled, a genuine laugh, and shoved more and more dirt in, building up more of sweat.

“I’m sorry, do you not fucking see this?” Nigel asked with a smirk as he kicked a  _ little _ more dirt in with his cast, and looked deliberately proud of himself.

“You’re loads of help, Nigel.” Cal shook his head, bending a little to get bigger shovelfuls of dirt into the hole, filling up fast. He was starved too.

“All that’s keeping me going is the scenery around here,” Nigel said with a smile in his voice, admiring Cal’s backside as he bent like that.

Cal worked faster and finally the hole was filled, and he was drenched in sweat and mist. He rubbed a hand over his forehead to sop some of it up with his shirt. “Okay. We done? Do we need to… put down leaves or something?”

Nigel took the shovel from Cal and tossed it in the open back of the car, then hobbled back to Cal with a shake of his head. “No, gorgeous, we were  _ supposed _ to bury something out here. Let everyone fucking see it,” he whispered, and kissed Cal’s dirty face, three times, ending with a kiss to his lips. “You’re not hiding anything anymore.”

“Right,” Cal said, with a smile, and a little less timid about the whole thing now that it was covered up. He just hoped it stayed covered up. He opened the car door for Nigel and then shut it, and got into his side, and started the prius up.

“Are Meyerists allowed a big, greasy American pizza if they just tried to off themselves? I came all the way, and no big, greasy American pizza, yet. Seems like a fucking shame,” Nigel sighed.

Cal laughed. “No, but you aren’t really a Meyerist, are you?” Cal said with a grin, taking the road out of the forest and onto the main highway. “We’ll have to be quick, you aren’t supposed to be off property.”

Nigel brightened for a moment, almost startled into an incredulous face when Cal said that. “We’re … going to go get some pizza? Secretly? Is this a fucking  _ date _ , Cal Roberts?” he chuckled, eyes bright and shiny, a rare, huge smile on his handsome face. 

“It… might be?” Cal hadn’t gone on a date in decades. He grinned over at Nigel, flushing a little. “It’s just pizza.”

Nigel rolled the window down and let some of the cool, misty air in as Cal drove them. He looked out the window while his left hand found Cal’s right, and held it between their seats. “I faked my own near-death, had a public hysterical fucking fit, then helped you bury a dead pig, and now, pizza. Best date I’ve ever had, so far.”

Cal shook his head and held Nigel’s hand as he drove to a little place just off the side of the road, a small joint he’d heard was good for pizza, but had never gone himself because their options weren’t vegan. He parked, and leaned over to Nigel to kiss his lips. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Nigel kissed Cal back, both of them calm now after the dramatic and morbid evening they’d had. Nigel brushed some dirt off of Cal’s face with his hands, and smiled a little at him, mostly with his eyes, able to feel his  _ idiot _ heart squeeze with the weight of how much he loved Cal. “Yeah, you’re welcome,” Nigel whispered, staring intently into Cal’s eyes. “You’re not alone, alright? You need to kill someone, just … let me help next time. Less work.”

“You weren’t here the first time,” Cal pointed out, his heart swelling his chest in ways it hadn’t since he and Sarah were very young. This was so,  _ so _ different. He got out and helped Nigel, walking them to the door of the place, which someone opened for them when they saw their state. “Table for two.”

The host seated them, and Cal handed Nigel the menu. “Whatever you want.”

“You’re damn right, whatever I want,” Nigel muttered, but his eyes were smiling at Cal over the menu that he read for a full minute before he closed it and tossed it down to the table. The radiant happiness that seemed to glow from around Nigel looked at odds with his gruesome injuries, but love had always made Nigel somewhat insane. This time it felt like he’d fallen even harder. “Did I ever tell you how I met my former wife?” Nigel asked, as the waitress brought them glasses of cold water.

Cal canted his head and thanked the waitress. “Order first,” Cal suggested, but let his fingers brush Nigel’s gently, that he was allowed to continue his story.

Nigel ordered a pizza that was half every kind of meat the restaurant would carry, and half vegetarian, then handed the menu back, and looked at Cal again, over the table. “I had been injured … pretty fucking bad. A job went south, I managed to get to a piece of shit safehouse I kept over a restaurant, and laid down, ready to die there. I think I nearly did,” he mused, with a shrug of his wide shoulders. “It’s how I got that long scar,” he said, miming over his own torso with one hand.   
  
“I was laying there, not sure if I was going to fucking make it or not and this  _ sound _ came floating up from below. It was a cello. Someone was playing the cello down there and I was so fucking out of it, and it was so good that I made myself keep waking up, keep breathing, just to hear it. Finally, when I could, I went down to see who was playing. It was a woman. I married her. I felt like she saved my life,” Nigel said, and swallowed a mouthful of ice water.

“Maybe she did,” Cal offered, sipping his own water, a little nervous about the pizza, since there was cheese on it, but maybe for Nigel he’d just buckle down and do it for once.

“I really thought so, for years,” Nigel said, gazing into the distance for a moment while he spoke, then looked back at Cal. “I meant what I said, I’m a fucking romantic. Can’t help it. The thing is, she didn’t save me. She didn’t even know I was there, if she did, I don’t think she would have run over and started patching me up with her hands. I was a stranger.”

He looked at Cal, right into his eyes. “She didn’t pull a fucking building’s worth of rubble off of my mangled body.  _ You _ did.”

Cal’s head canted slightly as he listened, already aware he’d saved Nigel’s life, of course, that was the point. He just hoped it wasn’t the only reason Nigel was dealing with him. “I did. Is that what all this is about?”

“What, everything today?” Nigel asked, and shook his head, a little surprised that Cal would think so. “No. No, that’s not what this was about. I wanted to make sure no one was going to come along and fucking take you away,” Nigel said, and finished his glass of water with a long swallow, then pushed it toward the edge of the table for a refill.

“All of this,” Cal said, hoping it wasn’t just more hero worship, so to speak. “It’s not just because I saved you, is it? I…” Cal had this problem with Mary, and that didn’t go over well, but Nigel was different, or at least he hoped. Cal had not expected to fall in love with Nigel when he pulled him from the wreckage, and now he was head deep in love and if it failed now he wasn’t sure he’d ever try again.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Nigel almost spat, and straightened in his chair, then leaned over, closer to Cal, over the table. “Do I look like a man who does  _ shit _ because I feel obligated to someone? Fucking  _ ever _ ?” he asked, with a lock of his intense eyes on Cal’s, then just stared at him for a long moment, and took Cal’s hand in his own, as much as his wrist would let him, making contact.

“Alright. I need to … what the fuck do you call it? I need to fucking unburden, Cal. I love you. I didn’t mean to, but I did, and I do. I’m in love with you, that’s why all this … all of it. That’s why I don’t want anyone coming along and taking you away. Not ever. That’s what I’m willing to bleed for. ” Nigel said, unapologetically, staring into Cal’s eyes. 

Cal looked stunned, big blue eyes large and gazing at Nigel as he confessed, as he let go of his secrets. Cal squeezed Nigel’s hand, keeping their voices between them, his heart racing fast. “Why do you think I was  _ worried _ ? Why do you think I want to go back to Romania with you?”

“I’m really fucking good in bed,” Nigel whispered with a little shrug of one shoulder, but his heart began to pound in his chest, and he stared back at Cal. “I didn’t know you felt more than just lust until you came charging up the stairs at me, tonight with that  _ look _ on your face, like I just burned your whole fucking house down when you saw me bloody.” Nigel took a deep breath, and didn’t even notice the food set on the table next to them, too entranced with Cal.

If all Cal wanted was lust with someone, he could probably easily find it. But Cal had stayed mostly non recreational for his own purposes. Until Nigel. There had been an odd connection made, and not because Nigel had needed the saving,  but because he didn't want it and Cal did it anyway. They were so opposite, and yet they shared values in their way of life, though perhaps Nigel's were more extreme, the understanding was there. They were already in the thick of it, both of them, trapped and ensnared by the heart.

“You don't find me hard to love?” Cal asked, slight shift to his jaw.

Nigel knew Cal was referring to something Sarah told him, a long time ago, able to remember Cal saying something about it before. “The fucking opposite, Blue Eyes, the fucking opposite,” Nigel said, as he brushed his thumb over the back of Cal’s hand in his own.

Cal watched Nigel's face, and squeezed his hand. He let go and pushed the pizza over to him. “Eat. You need it to heal.”

Nigel smirked at Cal, and moved the food between them, then took a piece of the meaty half of the pizza, and tried it. “Mmm…” he grunted.

Cal stared at the pizza, having not eaten it since he was about five years old, he hardly had the appetite for such things. He took a slice of the veggie and set it on the plate in front of him, and picked at it a little. It was mostly for Nigel anyway.

Nigel smiled at Cal, but knew better than to stare. Cal ate furtively, with the hurried secrecy of a man not used to sharing a table with anyone. It reminded Nigel of they way dogs ran off with scraps down an alley when he fed them, sometimes. “This is fucking heavenly,”  Nigel groaned.

Picking the veggies off and eating those, Cal merely watch Nigel eat with gusto, the way he hadn’t with anything Cal had made him. “I can take the rest to go if you want. We’ll… smuggle it in.”

Nigel smiled at Cal for the idea, and took another piece of pizza, then winked at him. “Bending your own rules for me?” he chuckled, in a good mood.

Now all he needed was a cigarette.

“They’re more like guidelines,” Cal explained, flagging down a box for the rest of the pizza, which the waitress laid down for them and Cal set his credit card down on the table for her to pay for it.

“Thanks, angel,” Nigel murmured, still holding Cal’s hand over the table, actually tired now that he ate. He yawned, drained from the adrenaline and blood loss, but still had a happy gleam in his dark eyes. “Don’t suppose I could charm you into skipping town with me, and heading to Vegas?”

“Las Vegas?” Cal asked, brows turned upward with a little concern. “I haven’t been before. I’m not sure we’d get far without reporters, we don’t need that right now...” Cal shook his head, well aware that if Nigel was seen out of the compound grounds, he’d be shipped right back home.

“It was worth a try, right?” Nigel chuckled, and loaded the rest of the pizza into the box, then closed it and sucked a little cheese off of his fingers with a wink at Cal. “Maybe someday. Always wanted to go.”

“If we can get you here legally,” Cal suggested with a gesture of his head and signed the checked and put his card back into his wallet. He stood, and helped Nigel to his feet, letting him lean.

“Laws are made by the rich to keep them rich,” Nigel muttered with a shrug of his shoulders, and stood to wrap an arm around Cal. He prefered Cal’s sturdy body to any boring old crutch, by far. “I have my own rules, good enough for me.”

“And what would we do in Vegas?” Cal asked, a small smile playing across his lips and brightening his eyes as he gathered the box and started to the door with Nigel. Someone held the door for them, and Cal thanked them.

“What people usually do in Vegas: fuck in a fancy hotel, spend time in a pool, spend money, gamble, drink, eat too much and maybe run off and get married by fat Elvis,” Nigel said, nonchalantly, but watched Cal’s reaction out of the corner of his eye.

Cal almost said something about being a recovering alcoholic, but the last bit caught him off guard, and he stared at Nigel, sure he was kidding. “People actually do that?”

“Yeah, people fucking do that,” Nigel replied, and looked back at Cal, trying to read his reaction. “Why the fuck not? It’s better than spending thousands of dollars on some shit-show circus to impress everyone else while you don’t even enjoy the day.”

“Is that how you married Gabi?” Cal asked, needing a second to process what Nigel was proposing-- that Nigel  _ was _ proposing.

“Yes,” Nigel muttered, and shook his head, looking at Cal with a little smile. “It wasn’t about getting married. It was about making everyone else happy, probably a bad start, come to think about it,” Nigel said, able to see everything a little more clearly now, with some distance.

“We don’t go all out The Movement. We do a ceremony and share in the day, nothing else,” Cal explained, and helped Nigel down into the car, and then set the pizza box in his lap. He jogged around and got into the driver’s side and looked at Nigel seriously. “Were you pulling my leg or were you proposing?”

Nigel looked over at Cal, and reached up to rest his big palm over the back of Cal’s neck, connecting them with the gesture. “When I know what I want, I fucking know what I want. I might not have asked you just now, but I  _ will _ fucking ask you to marry me, and if you turn me down, well … I’ll have to live with that,” Nigel said, as he brushed his thumb over Cal’s cheekbone, then leaned over to kiss him on the mouth. 

Cal’s hand rested against Nigel’s shoulder and then snaked up against his neck where his

tattoo was, and kissed him back slowly, letting the thought sink in. It wasn’t going to be today, or tomorrow, but Nigel wanted to  _ marry _ him. “Guess I’ll try to act surprised when you do.”

Nigel chuckled at that, and bit Cal’s lower lip, softly, then stared into his eyes. “Oh,  _ you’ll _ be surprised,” he said, with a dark smirk.

Cal bit Nigel back and then started the car. Getting married didn’t seem like a terrible idea, it’d keep Nigel here, but Cal wasn’t so sure Nigel wanted to be kept. At least not here or the compound. “I guess we’ll see.”

He pulled out and started driving toward the compound back gates.

Nigel fell asleep in the car, his head against Cal’s shoulder as he drove, too exhausted to keep his eyes open on the way back, and too comfortable with Cal. Cal had become everything to him, and one of the very, very rare people Nigel actually trusted, a club of one.


	6. Chapter 6

Nigel woke when they arrived at Cal’s bungalow again, and stretched his arms before he looked up at the house, which looked empty again, but with a note taped to the door. “Here already?” he murmured, groggily.

“I drove around a bit so you could sleep,” Cal said, with a little smile, and got out to help Nigel, taking the box of pizza from his lap. “Come on.”

Nigel hadn’t realized he had fallen asleep, and pushed his still-bloodied hair out of his handsome face as he climbed out, slowly, and rubbed his eyes with one hand. “Thanks, gorgeous,” he murmured, groggily, and wrapped an arm around Cal to lean against him as they climbed the steps together.

Cal pulled the note off the door and pushed it open, hobbling with Nigel inside, and to let him sit down. The place was clean, couch replaced with a new one and rug set out over the bare wood floors.

“Looks pretty fucking nice,” Nigel said, surprised, and hobbled in to sit on the new couch as Cal read the note from the followers saying that they cleaned the living room, left a peach pie, and wished Nigel well.

“Even after all that, they made you pie,” Cal said with a chuckle, though he was sure not all the followers were too thrilled. He set the note down, and stuck the pizza in the fridge for later if Nigel wanted it. “Need pills?”

“Yeah, maybe one,” Nigel groaned and stretched out on the new couch with a sigh, his stomach showing where the loaned t-shirt rode up when he stretched his long arms over his head. “We both need a fucking shower…”

Cal shook out a pill and handed it to Nigel with a glass of water. “Take that and then we’ll get one. I’ll get the wrap for your cast.” 

“Thanks, Blue Eyes,” Nigel murmured, and swallowed the pill, then the water with a sigh. His leg was absolutely throbbing now, up to his chest, but he’d over-done it today, of course. It was worth it.    
  
Nigel pulled his shirt off, slowly, and tossed it onto a nearby chair, then sat up slowly, a little dizzy as gravel crunched outside. A car had pulled up. “Expecting anyone?” Nigel asked, his suspicious nature flaring at the unexpected sound.

Cal looked out the window, ready to close the blinds. “No, I’m not,” he sighed, only too aware of who it would be, and who would  _ drive _ in. “I’ll start the bath up for you, this might be a minute.”

“Who the fuck is it?” Nigel asked, with a frown, and hobbled over to the window when there was a knock at the door, then another, right after. Whoever it was, they were impatient.

“Sarah,” Cal said, giving Nigel a look. He opened the door, blocking Sarah from coming in completely. He was still dirty, sweaty, and gross.

“Cal,” Sarah said, and gave him a look for blocking the door, like a mother chiding a rebellious son. “I need to  _ talk _ to you,” she said, sternly, arms folded over her chest as she looked at Cal’s state.

“Now? It’s late, Sarah,” Cal said, canting his head at her, arms folded over his own chest, looking at her imploringly. “What’s so important it can’t wait?”

Sarah looked at Cal, incredulously. “A refugee in your care just tried to kill himself, Cal! You don’t think that’s important? Where is he?”

“He’s inside resting. We took care of the situation. He unburdened with me. It’s  _ fine, _ ” Cal insisted, and stepped out, shutting the door behind him. “It’s better if you don’t talk about it like that, you don’t want to trigger him, again, Sarah.”

“Cal, you are in over your head,” Sarah said after sighing and pursing her lips at Cal, then stepped closer, “I can always tell when you’ve taken on something too big. Are you … are you drinking again?”

“No, I’m not drinking again, Sarah. My last drink was with  _ you _ ,” Cal said, sternly, trying to keep him the barriers and walls, not to let her see the cracks. “I’m fine, he’s fine and sorry. We went for a drive and a walk, he’ll be fine.”

Sarah frowned, confused. Something was different with Cal, something she couldn’t put her finger on except to notice that he didn’t respond to her like he usually did. “What’s going on? What happened?” she asked, troubled.

“You already know. He had a few too many pills, ordered a pig, we went to give it a proper burial and talked,” Cal reiterated for Sarah.

“No, no, I mean what happened to you? You’re different since last time I saw you,” Sarah said, scrunching up her face in a frown as she shook her head. Cal was … he wasn’t colder, he was less lost, more grounded, less willing to look at her the way he used to, something she’d come to depend on, on a bad day.

Even after she interrogated him about Silas, Cal couldn’t ever just drop Sarah, she had been his star, the light in his Light. But then he met Nigel and things changed, Cal saw his self worth for more than just what he’d been giving here. He’d only just saw her a few weeks ago when Nigel was brought in, otherwise it was phone calls and texts, she was busy these days with her growing part in The Movement.

“I’m.. I’m not different,” Cal said, shaking his head shortly.

“You let your hair grow,” Sarah pointed out with a little nod, and looked Cal over, trying to pinpoint what was so different about him, then looked back up at him, still frowning. “It’s since that press fiasco in Romania. You’ve been different since all that attention, something Steve wouldn’t want for us, Cal.”

“It has  _ nothing _ to do with the press attention,” Cal insisted, narrowing his eyes on her. “And that ‘fiasco’ has brought in a lot of potential followers in the last few weeks. More than the tornado. We’re growing and sharing our beliefs. Helping people, isn’t that what we do? Try to get others to see the Light? Not keep them from it?”

“We don’t want reporters hounding our followers when they’re out, Cal. You know what they’re going to call us, you know what they’re already calling us and it’s not good for the group! I’m supposed to keep an eye on you, and the second you leave you run off and pull a publicity stunt like this? Maybe you shouldn’t start the group in Romania…” she sighed, pacing in a circle on the porch, sleeves tugged down over her hands.

Cal’s bright blue gaze went dark as the night around them and he stepped in to Sarah’s space, grasping her by the shoulders. “You don’t get a say, you’re still just an 8R. I’m going back to Romania to finish what I started when Nigel is set to go. Is that understood,  _ Sarah _ ?”

Sarah glared back at Cal, and slid her shoulders out of his grasp, then backed up to the edge of the porch, looking at him from there. “I’m not going to be 8R forever, Cal, and I’m not the only one who thinks you’ve bitten off more than you can chew!”

“Talking to Bill and Felicia again?” Cal asked, deadpan as he folded his arms over his chest again and watched her. “Just like I told them, I know how to get followers, I know how to make people  _ believe _ . All you can do, Sarah, is… counsel them. Talk them through hard times. Are you  _ mad _ because Nigel doesn’t want your counsel?”

That had to be it. She was so used to being the caretaker, the hero.

“How do you know if he wants to talk to me or not? He hasn’t even  _ met  _ me, Cal,” Sarah said, with an injured look on her face. “I haven’t even been able to offer to help him properly because you won’t let him see me,” she sighed, and stepped closer. 

Cal turned and opened the door, looking at Nigel, still shirtless. “Did you want to talk to Sarah? She’s insisting you’d prefer her.”

Sarah put on a friendly face as soon as she realized Nigel was there, and looked absolutely saint-like as she walked in, past Cal to approach Nigel, looking into his eyes sympathetically. “Hi there, Nigel. I’m Sarah, I’m a counsellor here, and I’ve come to talk to you about what happened,” she said, softly. “Anything you tell me is just between us, I am not here to judge you in any way,” she assured the man.

Nigel looked at Sarah, then at Cal, then back at Sarah with cold indifference. “Nah, I’m fucking good.”   
  
Sarah blinked, confused, and looked at Nigel’s bandaged wrists. “You just tried to take your own life, that’s a very spiritually bankrupt place you’re coming from. I’m sure that talking would help you to sort out the adjustment you’re going through an-”   
  
Nigel held up a hand, stopping her from going further. “Lady, save the fucking sales pitch. I’ve got a counsellor. You walked right past him. We talked, we chanted, we buried a fucking pig, I feel better now,” he said, dismissively, and walked out of the room slowly, toward the bathroom. “Cal! I need to wrap my fucking leg!” he shouted back, like an old man at his long-suffering spouse.   
  
Sarah stood there, gob-smacked. No one had ever just … replaced her before she even got there.

Cal watched Sarah from the open door and gestured her out. “I should go tend to him.” He didn’t care how intimate that sounded either, Sarah was smart enough to figure it out.

Sarah looked at Cal, her mouth still a little open, then blinked a few times as things started to fit together, slowly. The change, the timing, the way Cal didn’t seem to flirt with her anymore, ever. “Oh…”

“People don’t wait around forever, Sarah.” Cal nodded to the door, ushering her out. She looked back at Cal, as though betrayed, and then stepped out, still utterly speechless when Cal shut the door.

Nigel’s cast thumped down the hallway from the bathroom where he left the water running, and he leaned against the wall, looking at Cal. “Someone thinks they’re pretty fucking important…”

“She’s always been that way,” Cal insisted, locking the door behind him, and then strolled over to Nigel, grabbing the plastic on his way. “Come on, let’s get you wrapped.”

Nigel held his arm out to wrap around Cal’s shoulders when he was close enough, and leaned against him to make it down the hallway, holding tighter than he needed to. “Nosy bitch…” he muttered to himself, then started undoing Cal’s filthy shirt when they reached the bathroom.

Cal shrugged his shirt off when Nigel finished and bent down to wrap his leg with plastic, and then helped him out of the pants, over the cast ,and off. “She’s… yeah. I think she understands now, though.”

Nigel smirked about that, and tugged Cal closer by his belt, then kissed him on the mouth. “Good. I don’t need her thinking you’re still around to boost her  _ fucking _ ego whenever she needs it,” he muttered.

“She got it,” Cal insisted, kissing Nigel back slowly, humming against his mouth as he shimmied out of his own pants and left a pile by the hamper of their clothes. He checked the water and then got in, hands in Nigel’s to help him.

Nigel let Cal help him in the tub, his good leg in the water first, then he sank down, slowly, careful not to wet his cast, or the bandages on either wrist. He sighed, deeply, and rested back against Cal’s solid chest with his broken leg propped up over the edge of the tub. “I’ll french you in the middle of the street if you’re not sure she got it..”

Cal chuckled and grabbed the bar of soap and lathered it down Nigel’s chest, this had become their daily now, baths together, relaxing. Cal had never been less… stressed. He kissed Nigel’s ear from behind. “Everyone would have no problem knowing then.”

“Would that be the worst thing in the world?” Nigel asked, and stretched out with a little smile, letting Cal lather him all over.

“No. We don’t discriminate here. Might not be what they expected,” Cal answered honestly. He rinsed off Nigel’s chest and  nuzzled his head with his nose.

Nigel closed his eyes at the chuckle, and looked back at Cal. “The great leader, in love.”

“The in love part will surprise them the most” Cal said thoughtfully against Nigel's ear.

“With a Romanian, meat-eating thug,” Nigel laughed, and leaned back against Cal’s chest, quite happily.

Cal used a cup to scoop water over Nigel’s hair, getting it wet enough before he worked some shampoo through his silvery strands. “Well, when you put it that way…”

Nigel stretched his neck back with a sigh, always happy when Cal washed his hair. It was one of his favorite sensations in the world, a strangely innocent one.

It was a rare occasion when Cal took care of anyone else, let alone so personally. He rubbed fingers and thumbs into Nigel’s skull and neck, working out any tension there, and then gently scooped more water to rinse his hair and all the blood away with it.

Nigel made a low grunting sound in his chest, and pressed his head into Cal’s strong hands. “Who the hell are Bill and Felicia?”

“The other 10Rs,” Cal explained, thumbs running up the side of Nigel’s neck toward his ears. “They don’t think I’m capable.”

“Then they’re fucking idiots,” Cal muttered, supportively, and groaned deep in his chest at the touch.

“Mm, I’ve tried to tell them that too, they insist they are not,” Cal sighed, and gently washed Nigel’s arms with the soap, careful of the bandages on his wrists.

“Idiots are always the fucking last to know,” Nigel muttered, and watched Cal’s hands move with soap suds trailing his fingers, first one arm, then the other.

Cal would enjoy taking care of Nigel while Nigel still needed it, as he knew the man would likely refuse the help once he was healed up. But he was sure they would still have  _ these _ moments. “They think they know everything about The Movement, about what Steve wants…”

“Isn’t he dying, or something? How the fuck would they know?” Nigel asked, unimpressed with these idiots who were trying to hold Cal back.

“Silas claimed to have been able to communicate with Steve while he’s been in his coma, but…” Cal shrugged under Nigel’s weight, trailing suds down his stomach and hips. “There’s no saying exactly what Steve envisioned. Once he’s dead, there’s no remedy for that, so that’s why  _ I _ wrote the last two runs of The Ladder _. _ ”

“Silas said he could talk to a guy in a coma?” Nigel laughed, and shook his head at the thought. “What a fucking load of shit.” He looked back at Cal, and smiled a little. “So, basically the road map, right?”

“That is if they believe me and take it,” Cal sighed,  “There’s so much disbelief going on in the upper rungs that I’m not so sure.”

“Sounds more and more like the fucking mob all the time,” Nigel chuckled, and looked back at Cal, fondly.

“Only we aren’t offing people because they piss us off or betray us,” Cal pointed out, though he could only speak for The Movement, not himself.

“That you know of,” Nigel whispered.

Cal raised his brows at Nigel.” We don’t.”

“Alright,” Nigel said, and leaned up to kiss the underside of Cal’s jaw, nipping at his chin a little before he relaxed back against him, wrists still up and out of the water.

“You don’t believe me,” Cal whispered softly, kissing Nigel’s ear.

“I think that maybe you don’t know what they’re all actually up to, and people in power will do just about fucking anything to stay there, no matter what kind of power they have,” Nigel said, and traced his fingertips over Cal’s exposed kneecap where his leg bent, out of the water.

“I’m one of a few higher rung members, what would I not know about?” Cal asked, wondering what it was Nigel thought exactly they did. The worst that had happened under their watch was someone falling off the side of a mountain.

“They have Sarah keeping an eye on you? They’re hiding shit from you, trust me,” Nigel murmured, looking back at Cal.

Cal grabbed the soap against and started to lather his way down to Nigel’s hips. “Even more reason for me to get out of this country.”

Nigel stretched his long, lean body out for Cal when he did that, and wrapped one arm around Cal’s neck, able to bend it back in a nearly acrobatic move. “We could leave whenever you want, I can always recover there…”

“Facilities where you live are hardly the sort you will need if something happened. I’d rather wait until you were able to walk on your own, at least,” Cal explained, “And then we should be able to get the medical facility for the Compound better equipped by then.” Cal ran the soap between Nigel’s thighs, against his balls.

“Fucking distracting me?” Nigel groaned as Cal did that, shifting against Cal under the water.

“Maybe I just like touching you,” Cal whispered, and bit Nigel’s ear softly, hands roaming over Nigel’s balls and cocks, cleaning him while he fondled shamelessly.

“Seems like it,” Nigel moaned, and writhed in Cal’s lap where he sat, groaning softly at the way Cal groped him.

“I almost thought I was going to lose you today,” Cal admitted, stroking Nigel in one hand slowly.

Nigel closed his eyes, and rested his head on Cal’s shoulder, arching his hips upward, into Cal’s hand. “Did you?” Nigel whispered, and licked his own lips.

“For a second. I’d forgotten what you said. I panicked,” Cal admitted, unburdening to Nigel the way he used to with Sarah long ago. “I can’t lose you.” He stroked slowly, up and over Nigel’s cock, thumbing the tip with soapy suds.

“Not gonna lose me, Cal,” Nigel whispered, gripping the edges of the tub as Cal stroked him, and he rubbed back against Cal’s cock, the smooth curves of Nigel’s ass stroking him.

Cal groaned at the feeling, raising his hips in time with Nigel’s, friction too good not to. “I cannot wait until you don’t have that cast,” he admitted.

“Yeah? What are you gonna do to me?” Nigel purred, with a wicked smirk on his lips as he teased Cal more, grinding back against him slowly.

Cal flushed, he wasn’t really sure yet, still very new to all of this, but Nigel made him want to do so many things. “Hold you down, fuck your mouth,” Cal murmured as he leaned forward to kiss Nigel heatedly, their bodies moving slowly together in long, rutting motions.

Nigel groaned at that, surprised at how well Cal dirty-talked when he was worked up. He kissed the lips those words came from and plunged his tongue into Cal’s mouth, almost miming the act Cal murmured into his ear. “I don’t need to fucking stand up for that, angel, you can do that now…” he groaned.

“I know, but maybe I want you functioning at one hundred percent,” Cal said, wanting their experiences together to be great, not just mediocre because one of them was hurt. It was only  few weeks. Besides, Cal would feel better about it, anyway.

“That’s going to take fucking  _ weeks _ ,” Nigel moaned, as he kissed Cal as much as he could, so frustrated that he was almost ready to just dunk the fucking cast in the water and be done with it.

“What do you want to do to me when you get it off?” Cal asked, distracting Nigel, pumping his cock over and over with his fist as he rutted up against his ass.

Nigel teased Cal relentlessly, able to feel him hard against the cleft of his ass now, held by it under the warm, soapy water as Nigel arched and rutted. “I want to fuck you,” Nigel smouldered, “over and over until you’re sticky and exhausted and barely know your own fucking name, Cal...”

Heat spiked through his loins, and Cal pressed his cock against Nigel, friction sparking another heated kiss against Nigel’s perfect lips. “You think I’d let you fuck me?”

Cal’s cock rubbed against Nigel’s entrance, and the sensation made him gasp, then swear low, under his breath. “Why the fuck wouldn’t you?” Nigel purred, and managed an enigmatic, sultry look back at Cal.

“Will you let me fuck you?” Cal asked, gazing back into Nigel’s eyes, dark blue to dark amber. 

Nigel took a few breaths, chest wet and heaving under the water of the bath before he looked into Cal’s eyes and kissed him over his shoulder. “I’ve never let a man fuck me before,” he confessed, the flush rising in his face from his neck as he whispered the words, realizing he really wouldn’t mind seeing and feeling Cal take him. “But .. yeah, I’d let  _ you _ fuck me.”

“Neither have I,” Cal whispered, palming down the flush over Nigel’s chest, and pressed his cock between his cheeks, sliding. He wouldn’t do it  _ now _ , but he wanted to know that Nigel would let him.

Nigel had never wanted to let someone fuck him, not even close. Then again, he’d never actually been in love with a man before. It had all been meaningless fun. He even shot a man once, in the dick, for insisting Nigel was going to bottom. But Cal? The thought of watching Cal fuck him was … Jesus Christ, it was perfect. He could imagine his chest flexing, his stomach, the look on his face. 

Nigel growled, low in his throat, and kept teasing himself with Cal’s cock, rubbing it against his own asshole, imagining as Cal stroked him. “First … time for everything,  _ Christ, _ that feels good,” he moaned, roughly.

Cal wrapped his arm around Nigel’s shoulders and bit his neck, then his ear. “What do you want, Nigel?”

“To watch you fuck me,” Nigel whispered, his cock starting to throb at the thought. God, he wanted both ways, he wanted them to switch every night, he wanted them to exhaust one another, not leave the bedroom for days on end because they were too busy fucking one another. 

Cal reached over and pulled the plug. “Let’s get out,” he suggested and gently helped Nigel to stand, and then grabbed a few towels, not worried about getting dry as much as he was they didn’t slip. “Then I’ll fuck you on the bed.”

Nigel looked at Cal, his heart pounding fast from lust and love. He pulled Cal close by his waist, and kissed him hard for that. “With this big fucking cast on my leg?” he whispered, grinning.

“You’ll be on your back, does it matter?” Cal asked, smirking against Nigel’s mouth as he repeated what he said earlier.

Nigel wrapped his arms around Cal to kiss him hard, stroking their tongues together as they moved blindly and slowly toward the bedroom, wrapped up in each other. “Oh, suddenly the cast isn’t such a big deal anymore?” Nigel teased with a bite to Cal’s neck, hard and sucking, able to leave a mark now that he knew it wouldn’t cost Cal everything he had.

Cal groaned, and tugged Nigel in gently, holding him against his neck, craned off to the side to let the muscle there go taut against Nigel’s tongue and teeth. “I’ll manage around it.” He gently pushed Nigel onto the bed, grabbing the oil they used often from the dresser.

So far the oil had been used for fingers, for hands, for rubbing against each other, not for this, but Nigel knew it was going to ease the way for more, one of these days. He laid back on the bed, leaning on his elbows, cock hard, his skin tanned from laying around in the sun while Cal worked, hair bleached shades of silver and ash that made his dark eyes look even darker. 

He watched Cal, heart beating even faster now, excited and aware that this was going to be different than anything he’d ever done. Of course it was, no matter who had who, it was going to be different. It was Cal.   
  
“C’mere…” Nigel purred.

Cal set the oil aside on the bed and crawled over to Nigel, between his legs and kissed him heatedly, hands in Nigel’s hair, tongues lashing ravishingly against each other as his cock pressed hard against the other man’s thigh.

Nigel moaned, and laid his leg with the cast on it to one side, then curled the other around Cal, squeezing him close and welcoming him as they kissed, hotly. Nigel could feel Cal against his thigh and ran his hands down Cal’s back, scratching softly against the nerves.

Shaking, Cal hoisted the one leg over his forearm, spreading Nigel, and rubbed his dick against his hole, breathing against against his mouth. “Nigel…”

Nigel kissed Cal, softly, able to feel him shaking, from head to toe, and took a deep breath, looking up at Cal. “You’re sure?”

“Only if you are,” Cal whispered against Nigel’s lips, sure that he’d wanted to do this for a while, know what Nigel felt like inside and out. He was nervous, admittedly, but he needed this.

“Fuck, yes,” Nigel whispered, and smiled against Cal’s lips, glad the shaking was just Cal’s nerves, nothing worse. He pulled him closer with his curled, long leg, and sucked Cal’s tongue slowly, then his lower lip, utterly in love.

Cal reached for the oil and slicked his fingers, and then rubbed it around Nigel’s pucker, just as they done many times before while messing around, slipping fingers inside of him slowly as his tongue explored Nigel’s mouth.

Nigel groaned into Cal’s mouth, and wrapped both arms around him, a tight wall of strong muscle holding Cal securely as Cal’s finger found it’s way into him. “Good … “ Nigel moaned, already rutting down against Cal’s finger as he looked up, into his eyes.

“Tell me when,” Cal whispered, working Nigel open slowly, carefully, rutting his own cock against his hip, desperate for more sweet friction.

Nigel bit the inside of his own cheek, which made it hollow even more dramatically than before, then grunted softly and arched at the moment Cal’s finger brushed his prostate. His handsome face seemed to dissolve into complete bliss, and Nigel nodded, breathing harder, his lithe body writhing against their mattress, sweating. “Fuck, yes, now … please, Cal-”

Cal slathered his cock and removed his fingers, sliding into Nigel slowly, holding his hips as he did, panting hard against Nigel’s knee, where he bit at the last moment when he pressed all the way in, to the hilt. “Fuck-”

Nigel’s hairy chest rose hard, and he groaned as Cal’s cock pressed it’s full length into him. It hurt, but it was fucking good at the same time. He’d never had a feeling of being filled before, and it was fucking mind-blowing, completely and entirely. “Cal-” he moaned, his toes and fingers splayed, then curled with pleasure as he watched Cal bury himself inside his body, just as he had wanted to.

Cal reached for Nigel’s shoulders, using them as leverage to plow himself into him, over and over, soft and easy at first, working his way up as the friction started to heat his core, and grip his spine with pleasure. Cal lost himself completely, groaning loudly, moving wildly with passion with sweeping bucks of his hips.

Nigel watched Cal, jaw dropped as he felt Cal start to speed up, thrusting harder inside him. Cal was so rigid, so buttoned-up that watching him lose himself in the pleasure of fucking was the sexiest sight Nigel could imagine. “Yes- Fuck, Cal, yes, harder-” Nigel groaned, arching his ass off of the bed, grinding down against Cal with a need he never imagined he would feel for any man. “Harder-”

Pushing Nigel down over him, Cal pistoned harder and faster, fucking passionately with quick motions that made the bed shake and move, thumping the headboard against the wall in a rhythmic time. Cal gasped and groaned, his body shaking with lust as the heat continued to build, daring to spill across his lower back and thighs, spurring him on.

Nigel clung to the solid girth of Cal’s arms, fingertips pressing into sweaty flesh as he gasped and moaned Cal’s name every time he felt Cal’s hips slap his ass. Cal’s cock felt like it was hard as a rock, and curved just so that the ridged head of it rubbed Nigel’s throbbing prostate every time the headboard left the wall for a moment. “Cal …  _ Cal _ , fuck, oh  _ God _ , yeah, keep fucking me like that-” Nigel moaned, loudly, unable to keep silent as he started to come.   


He gripped Cal’s short hair with one hand, fingers struggling to find purchase in the barely there curls, and tipped his head back, a throaty shout escaping as Nigel came heavily, flooding his and Cal’s stomachs, sticky and slick.

Cal watched with vivid blue eyes as Nigel fell apart under him with every slap of hips to ass. The brunet moaned as Nigel's ass squeezed around him, milking his cock as Cal joined Nigel in orgasmic bliss, every part of him on fire as he filled Nigel with one last gasp.

Nigel watched Cal flush and then shudder as he came, more intense this time than usual, and so gorgeous that Nigel knew he’d remember this, forever like some perfect photograph of a moment untouched by the grime of everyday life. “Cal,” he moaned softly, and reached up to touch Cal’s chest, the side of his throat.

Cal leaned and rested against Nigel's chest, elbows on either side of his head, panting against his mouth, as they gazed at each other. “Nigel…”

Nigel smiled, his entire body tingling after that. He touched Cal’s sweaty, handsome face, with both hands, and kissed him over and over as they caught their breath together. “Fuck …” he moaned, still feeling high from the way Cal fucked him.

“I meant it,” Cal whispered, forehead to forehead with Nigel, “I can’t live without you.” Cal was pretty sure The Light had guided him to Nigel for a reason, whether Nigel believed in that or not.

“You’re never gonna have to,” Nigel purred, and held Cal with both arms.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) No beta, edited to our best.  
> 2) PLEASE be mindful of tags here. It's been up since the start to warn you.  
> 3) This is now part of series we'll continue later, if you're interested.

People left them alone, the rumor was spread fairly quickly about Cal and Nigel, but fortunately most of the community was open minded about it. A week passed, and Cal did as he usually did and lead sermons, took care of Nigel, and looked in on the Romania’s branch’s progress. It was a phone call that stopped him dead in his tracks one night as he was settling in with Nigel. 

Cal looked at the number on the phone, his jaw shifting, and then took it to the other room, quietly talking. “Yeah, hi, ma. No. No. Yes. He’s still here. Ma…” One hand to his ear holding the phone, the other rubbing his temple, Cal sighed heavily as he paced the length of the hall. “No, no. Ma. Yes. Fine. I’ll come…. Now? Ma…” After a moment Cal resigned, shaking his head. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll be there in an hour.”

Cal hung up his cell phone and proceeded back into the bedroom, getting dressed again. “I gotta go. I’ll be back. You’ve got your pills and everything you need?”

Nigel’s instincts sharpened like a blade against a whet stone when Cal took the phone into the other room. Nigel nodded, and stood up, looking at Cal, head tilted. “Into the city?”

“Yeah. It’s my… mother, she’s, uh,” Cal swallowed, pocketing his phone into his pants after getting them on again. He pulled a shirt on over his head. “I haven’t seen her in… months.” Cal nodded his head a little, but the look in his blue eyes were less than thrilled.

Nigel moved a little closer, and touched Cal’s cheek with one hand. “I can come with, meet her. I can be charming, even clean up the language for five fucking minutes, if I have to.”

Cal looked at Nigel like a frightened little boy might, his eyes moving around his face slowly, blinking. He didn’t know how his mother wouldn’t react to Nigel, let alone Cal having a boyfriend at all. Probably not well. “I… should go alone…”

“Why?” Nigel asked, feeling more reluctant to let Cal go alone by the second, by how vulnerable Cal looked, suddenly.

“She’s old and testy. She doesn’t really like anyone,” Cal explained, sighing through his nose, and looked at Nigel. There were things hidden deep in Cal’s past that he couldn’t tell Nigel, not right now, maybe not ever. Especially about his mother.

“I’ll wait in the car, you seem … rattled,” Nigel murmured, and stroked his thumb over Cal’s jaw, determined not to let him go alone.

“Get dressed,” Cal sighed, biting his lip once, trying to offer Nigel a reassuring smile.

Nigel kissed Cal’s bitten lip, and limped down the hall to pull on pants and a shirt, then limped back. He had the feeling Cal was going to change his mind if he took too long, so he raked a hand through his hair, and that was that. “Alright, let’s go.”

Cal nodded and grabbed their jackets by the door, slid his on, and helped Nigel down to the car. He got in and pulled out of the lot and then drove out of the compound, headed toward the freeway toward the city.

Cal was quiet for the trip, tense. Nigel let him drive in silence for a long time. “Is she … fucking senile? With … Alzheimer’s or whatever they call it?”

“No. She’s an alcoholic,” Cal sighed, taking the exit they needed,  extra alert and aware. He shouldn’t even have Nigel out again. Fuck, let alone near his mother…

“Still drinking?” Nigel asked, able to understand that. Hell, his mother used to shoot up in front of him, even when she was ashamed of it, and told him not to look. It was fucking sad.

“Yeah. She’s in a home, so it’s controlled better, but she manages to sneak it in,” Cal explained, turning down one street and then another, into a nice neighborhood.

“She’s in some trouble? Drunk? That’s why she called?” Nigel asked, watching Cal’s tension rise like flood waters as he got nearer.

“She doesn’t call often. Last time she nearly burnt down her apartment. That’s why I put her in a care facility. Even that took….” Cal let out strangled sound, “convincing.”

Nigel swallowed, and nodded. He was no fucking psychiatrist but Cal sounded like he was trying to summon the courage to walk himself into a meat grinder. He touched Cal’s shoulder, and left his palm there, warm and steady. “She … sounds like a real bitch to deal with.”

Cal could really use a drink right about then, as he parked outside of the facility and looked at Nigel. “Last time I saw her, I convinced her to come see this place by having a drink with her. We… took a cab over and we walked around drunk. It didn’t end well, she started in on Steve and the Movement…”

“Steve who is basically your adopted father, Steve?” Nigel asked, and touched Cal’s hair, brushing his fingers through the short strands.

“Yeah, the founder. He took me under his wing when my parents failed to,” Cal murmured, there but not all there. He turned the car off. He still had not told Nigel about his own drinking problem, so he didn’t expect Nigel to understand.

Nigel touched the back of Cal’s neck, and moved closer to him in the car seat, rubbing the tense muscles with one hand. “She’s a fucking nightmare to deal with, huh?” Nigel muttered, and looked at the building, his passionate, protective instincts starting to boil the blood in his veins a little. “I’ll come. I won’t say anything. I’ll hang back.”

“Yeah,” Cal licked his lips and then leaned his head against Nigel’s for a second, and then got out of the car, and went to help Nigel out too, though these days Nigel was doing a pretty good job on his own.

Nigel leaned on Cal to get out of the car, and kept one arm around him as they walked in, able to tell Cal was sort of … not all there. Hollow inside. Nigel’s stomach twisted, and his brain began to shift into another mode entirely that looked for weak spots when he met a person. 

Cal walked them inside, and started for the desk, where he signed them in, and then the elevator so Nigel didn’t have to walk it up the stairs. In the elevator he got quieter and quieter. “Her name is Brenda. Just.. so you know.”

“Got it,” Nigel nodded, and leaned over to plant a kiss on Cal’s cheek, to try to remind him he wasn’t alone. “Just think of me as your bodyguard, alright?”

“With a cast?” Cal chuckled, shifting his jaw. “She’ll eat you up and spit you out.” Cal shook a little and then the doors opened and he walked out with Nigel, and found her room, knocking softly.

“Cal?” She asked through the door, “Is that you?”

“Yeah, ma, it’s me.”

The door opened, and the older, plump woman stood there looking at them, both. “Well when I asked if the Russian was still there I didn’t mean bring him.”

“He’s Romanian, ma,” Cal corrected, and Brenda shot him a look, brow raised. “Nigel this is my mother, Brenda, Ma this is Nigel.”

Brenda sized Nigel up like he was meat at market up for auction.

Nigel waited until Brenda got to his eyes, and gave her a direct look, like he could see through her, and held it. “Hello.”

“Cal, I just wanted to see you, dear,” Brenda said, moving her gaze from the taller man to her son, trying to give her best smile.

“Well, Nigel is… important to me, ma. I thought it was a good idea you meet him,” Cal explained, as he pushed his way into his mother’s little room.

“Important? Cal…” She gave Nigel another look. “You’re not-” she gestured knowingly toward the Romanian.

Nigel followed Cal, silent, as he promised he would be, but he stood next to Cal solidly, able to read the woman in front of him whose presence made his skin crawl for a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, but was was not about to doubt for a second.

“And what if I was?” Cal asked her, slowly lacing his fingers in Nigel’s as his mother’s eyes bore into him, alcohol present on her breath, reeking of it.

“You’re not a cock sucker, Calvin. You’re my baby boy, you would  _ never _ do that. You’ve always been on the straight and narrow…” she all but snarled at her son, her eyes flickering over Nigel with disgust.

Nigel didn’t flinch an inch, he knew better, and he had worse thrown at him. He just smirked, the smallest movement of his lips betraying a lot.

“Ma,” Cal sighed, “What did you need?”

“I just wanted to see you, Cal.” She touched his face, ignoring Nigel all together.

Nigel stepped back, with Cal, pulling Cal back with him, out of the range of Brenda’s hand. It made him uncomfortable. He didn’t know why. He didn’t  _ have _ to know why. He just had to act on it. After where he grew up, and what he saw, he knew a fucking snake when he saw one, and this woman was the slime left on the bottom of the rock after a snake died and rotted there. Cal was afraid of her. “ _ Don’t _ touch him, Brenda,” Nigel said, evenly, and softly. “Not gonna ask nice again.”

Brenda’s eyes flared just like Cal’s often did, angrily. “Calvin, are you going to let your  _ boyfriend _ talk to me like that?”

Cal’s eyes kept on his mother despite Nigel pulling him back, but he didn’t move forward either. “Yes. I am.”

“Cal. C’mon, let’s go have a drink. You and me, and….  _ Him _ . We’ll talk this out.”

“No!” Cal said, finally, holding on to Nigel with his hand, for grounding. “We’re leaving. You’re already too drunk.” He tugged on Nigel’s hand, toward the door.

“If you walk out, you better not come back,” She snarled at them both, stomping off to find her drink.

Cal took that moment to step out and shut the door behind them, shaking as the door clicked locked.

Nigel squeezed Cal’s hand, firmly, and walked him to the elevator, able to feel Cal trembling like a leaf. In that moment, feeling Cal shake like that from two supervised minutes with her, Nigel  _ hated _ Brenda. The elevator doors closed, and Nigel wrapped both arms around Cal, slowly, hugging him with his head resting over Cal’s. “You did good, angel. You did good.”

Cal had never told his mother ‘no’ before, though he tried often, it was the reason he never saw her, and never cared to. Living closer made it harder to say no. Cal desperately wanted to get out of the country forever. Steve often told him to face her and when he did, it was never good. “Told you she was horrible.” His blue gaze flitted up to Nigel’s amber eyes, wondering just how much he suspected of Cal and his childhood now.

“Yeah, you did. You were fucking right. Let’s get outta here, okay?” Nigel said, and kissed Cal’s forehead as the elevator doors opened, and he walked him through the empty lobby, slowly, out to the car. It started to rain, just little droplets at first, enough to unsettle the dust that collected over everything for the last, dry week.

Helping Nigel into the car, Cal just stood there for a minute, letting the rain pelt him, and then shut the door and walked around to the other side. He slid in and sat there, car started, but hands on the wheel, contemplating. “My dad took me with him to join the Meyerists when I was five to get away from my mother. She hated him for that, but took him back years later when he left.”

“Did she used to hit you?” Nigel asked, point-blank. The rain beat down over the roof of the car, which made it feel a little more like a sanctuary, a tiny bubble away from the world for them, and only them.

Cal slowly shook his head, turning the key over in the car, and started it up. “No, she yelled a lot, but never hit me.”

“She touched your face, and it looked like you checked out of your own fucking body, angel,” Nigel said, quietly. “That’s why I pulled you away, told her not to fucking do that.” Nigel had watched as Cal’s eyes went vacant, and his shoulders rose up around his neck, defensively, when his mother touched his face. It made his hackles rise, and only his promise to Cal that he wasn’t going to get confrontational made him do as little as necessary to keep her back.

Swallowing thickly, Cal pulled the car out, and started down the street, nodding as Nigel spoke, but didn't say anything.  He stopped down the street at the market and got out. “I need a drink. Do you want anything?”

“No,” Nigel said, with a raised eyebrow, looking out at  Cal. “I thought you didn’t drink, one of the rules…” Nigel didn’t mind a drink, hell, he wanted one too, but this felt as ominous as black clouds rolling in.

Cal placed a hand on the hood of the car and bent down to look at Nigel, his nerves on edge, the stress was finally catching up to him again, and he  _ knew _ without a doubt he shouldn’t go buy the whiskey he desperately wanted to drown in. “Beer and wine are fine,” Cal said, though neither of those were what he wanted.

Nigel shrugged his shoulders. “Just asking,” he said, and sat back to let Cal do as he pleased. He was a grown man, he couldn’t stop him, he’d be a hell of a hypocrite if he did.

Cal left and came back with more than just beer and wine, but a bottle that he set down between them on the middle console. He started the car again and drove back to the compound quietly, not a word said between them until they parked.

“Who pays for that fancy fucking place she’s in, anyway?” Nigel asked, obviously having stewed about it on the way back.

“I do,” Cal said, going around to help Nigel get out, bottle under his arm in the brown bag. “She can’t afford even to live on her own.”

Nigel climbed out, and kept quiet as they made their way up to the house, then walked in. Nigel closed the door with one hand, and looked at Cal, watching him. “It’s a nice place. She doesn’t deserve it.”

“Promised my dad I would take care of her the best I could,” Cal sighed, sitting the bottle on the counter, he just stared at it, didn’t open it, just stared. 

Nigel followed Cal, and stared at the bag-covered bottle. He took it out, and looked at it, then back at Cal. “If I’m right about what I think she is, she doesn’t fucking deserve it, no matter  _ what _ the fuck your old man said.”

Having never said out loud what his mother had done to him, or what that made her, Cal stared at Nigel, swallowing a little, but didn’t try to reach for the bottle. He knew he didn’t need it, but his mother always made him feel less than worthless, rock bottom, no matter what he did for her. “What she is…”

Nigel put the bottle in the kitchen sink, and leaned against it, staring at Cal for a long, quiet moment. “Bucharest is full of men who buy kids, use them for sick fucking things. It’s not just men, Cal. I  _ know _ that fucking look, the one you had when she touched your cheek,” Nigel said, and stepped closer to Cal, then reached out to touch his arm. “I know the shit that happens that no one wants to think is real. She didn’t hit you, but that would have been easier if she did. She looked at me like competition. You need a bottle of whiskey after two minutes with her. I fucking get it.”

“It used to be the only way I could deal with her. Drink it away. Forget it. Steve… he took me in when my dad went back to her, even though he knew,” Cal whispered, almost like he was too scared to say it out loud. “Sarah knew.  _ Knows _ . She’s always thought me too damaged from it to be any good for  _ anyone _ .”

Nigel listened, his eyes trained on Cal, intense and dark as he swallowed his own rage. Cal didn’t deserve to see it. “She, Brenda, … made you do _ things _ ?” Nigel asked, as generally and gently as possible, just to make sure they were talking about the same thing. “And your father fucking knew?”

Cal didn’t look at Nigel, he looked past him. “He knew, that’s why he took me away for a while. She saw me now and then…”

“And he didn’t tell the fucking cops?” Nigel asked, horrified and angry as he stepped closer to Cal, his jaw locked as he imagined that sick old  _ bitch …  _ Fuck. She was still trying to get him alone, too.

“Well, she made promises. He believed her and didn’t leave me alone with her often,” Cal explained very quietly, wringing his hands together.

“Fucking  _ OFTEN _ !?” Nigel snapped, enraged by the idea of any sick pervert doing that to any child, let alone Cal. “Oh, well that makes it fucking okay, then, as long as it’s not  _ often _ …” he snarled.

Cal recoiled away from Nigel, arms crossed over his chest defensively. His mother, as he got older, a teen, would always try to convince Cal it was  his idea, his fault, he shouldn’t have drank the drink she gave him. Alcohol had always been involved somehow. Cal had gone through some counseling at compound once Steve took him in for good, and he knew none of that was true  _ now _ .

Nigel saw Cal recoil, and quieted down, raking a hand through his ashy hair with a sigh. “Not mad at you, angel. I just … Christ, I can’t believe he did that, how the fuck … I just, I’m not a fucking father but if I was? No  _ fucking _ way. I’m pissed, but not at  _ you _ .” He sighed, trying to cool himself down for now. “How often does she call you, now?”

“Not very. I try to stay away from the area so she doesn’t think she can. It was… a few years before the time before this one. My father’s funeral.” Cal was distant now, locked away in on himself, talking calculated and emotionless. 

Nigel stepped closer, and looked at Cal, then touched his shoulder, and pulled him into a warm hug, holding him to his chest. “I’m sorry you had a couple of useless assholes for parents,” he murmured softly, but genuinely, and rubbed Cal’s back with the heel of his palm. “You never have to see that  _ sadistic bitch _ ever again.”

Cal’s mother hadn’t touched him in years, Cal was pretty sure she just liked the hold she had over him for him to come running when she did need him and he was in town. It didn’t help the matter though.  Cal leaned into Nigel. “We’re going to Romania next week anyway. Doesn’t matter..”

“It fucking matters. You shouldn’t have to wonder if that is her whenever your phone goes off. You should never have to hear her voice again, or have to be around her again,” Nigel seethed as he held his boyfriend. “ _ Hell _ is too good a place for that evil bitch,” he spat, and then cursed under his breath in Romanian.

Slowly, Cal wrapped his arms around Nigel’s waist, leaning into him as they leaned up against the counter. “I’m sure she won’t call again.”

That wasn’t good enough. She could call at any time, and that would hang over Cal’s head, he’d have to look his abuser in the face, and let her manipulate him all over again. Nigel laid one big hand over the back of Cal’s head, and kissed his temple. “Right.”

“You’re disappointed in me,” Cal whispered, looking up at Nigel. He’d be disappointed to learn that about himself too. Hell, he had been for a while. Cal worked hard not to let his mother’s shadow take him over, and step out from under it. The Light really had helped Cal, even if his mother did try to get back into his life often.

“What?  _ No _ , why the fuck would I be disappointed in you?” Nigel asked, caught off guard.

Cal shook his head, taking a deep breath and letting out slowly. “Never mind.” He chewed his cheek and then let pulled back a little to look at Nigel eye-to-eye.

“Cal, why do you think I would be disappointed in  _ you _ ? You didn’t do a fucking thing wrong,” Nigel said, still holding Cal close to him, staring into his blue eyes.

“Most people are,” Cal sighed, but he was starting to see clearer now, with Nigel at his side. “You’re not disgusted?”

Nigel swallowed hard, and shook his head, then kissed Cal’s forehead with more tenderness than anyone would have thought Nigel was capable of. “ _ Fuck _ , no. I’m disgusted with her. You just survived it, why the hell would that be something to be fucking ashamed of?” Nigel asked, and rested his nose against Cal’s hair. So many things made sense now, little things about Cal and how he reacted sometimes were suddenly pieces of a larger puzzle without missing pieces. 

“People that know tend to treat me differently,” Cal said quietly, though he had to admit, Silas was one of the few that never had, but how much Silas knew, he never knew exactly what Steve told the other 10Rs.

“I’m not going to,” Nigel promised, with a shake of his head. “Nothing changed. You’re the same man you were this morning. I just know a little more, that’s all,” he murmured, and touched Cal’s cheek, then nipped at his lips.

Cal actually believed Nigel when he said that and left their faces close, even after the kiss. “A little more that many do not know about me.”

“I love you the same, okay? Just as much,” Nigel whispered, their noses still brushing as he spoke.

Cal smiled, and pressed another kiss to Nigel’s lips. “Still going to ask me to marry you?”

Nigel nodded, very seriously, and kissed Cal again, more deeply on the mouth, tipping him back just a little in his arms. “Fuck, yes, of course I will.”

“Good,” Cal didn’t need to know when or how, just that someday it would happen. He’d found a strange sort of home in Nigel, an understanding, and was not about to let that go.

Maybe he’d even give Cal that bitch’s head in a box for a wedding gift. Nigel closed his eyes and held Cal tightly, his strong arms tight around Cal’s shoulders and back. “I fucking love you.”

“I fucking love you, too,” Cal whispered arms up around Nigel’s shoulders, keeping them pressed together at the chest and hip.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) No beta or editor, we do our own.  
> 2) We are at the end! This fic is now put into a series as at some point we will be coming back to our boys and continuing their lives. ;)  
> 3) Like this? Please follow and support us on tumblr! Ma href="http://constructfairytales.tumblr.com">ConstructFairyTales

The week came and went fairly quickly, and the cast was finally taken off Nigel’s leg. They were given clearance to head back to Romania. Cal was packing up his own things and the few items they had purchased for Nigel, who was now up and walking around by himself, with only a slight limp.

“Excited to go home?” Cal asked.

Nigel sauntered in, and stretched out on their bed, like a large cat while he watched Cal work. “Yeah, it’ll be good to get back, but this little love-shack is going to be hard to forget,” he smirked.

Cal lifted his eyes to Nigel, a smirk on his face. “I’ll  have something just like it at the Compound there.”

“Yeah? Alright, then good enough for me. As long as I’ve got you, a bed, some time to ourselves? I’m happy,” Nigel whispered, and pulled Cal down to the bed by his belt, then kissed him. Cal’s phone began to ring, of course.

Cal grinned into Nigel’s mouth, letting his phone ring for a little bit longer. It stopped, and he thought it was over, when it started up again, just as he crawled over Nigel. Cal plucked his phone from his pocket, and swallowed.

“What? Who is it? FBI coming to fucking get me?” Nigel asked, and he realized who that was. He took the phone out of Cal’s hand, and answered it himself. “What the fuck do you want?” he said, in a confrontational voice, as flat and as accommodating as a cinder block. 

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Brenda said on the other line, snarling her words at the Romanian. “Put my  _ son _ on the phone  _ now. _ ”

“I’m pretty sure you know goddamned well that I’d rather run over my own balls with a steam-roller than make Cal say a  _ fucking word to you _ , you piece of shit. I’m fucking blocking your number, go have a stroke somewhere you rapacious  _ bitch _ ,” he said, with frightening calm.

“Now, you listen here you cock sucking piece of shit, you tell my son to talk to me, or he’ll be written right out of the will,” Brenda said, but before Nigel could say anything else, Cal reached over for the phone and hung up on his mother.

Nigel’s eyes were dark, and smouldering, like two pieces of coal burned inside them, and he shifted his jaw as he looked at Cal, then tossed the phone aside, and pulled Cal closer to him, slowly. “C’mere.”

“She knows somehow it’s my last day here,” Cal whispered, letting Nigel pull him closer, all but over him like a blanket. He snuggled up to Nigel, nose against his neck.

“Well, she can kiss my ass,” Nigel whispered back, and held him with both arms, then rubbed Cal’s back. “You tired, Blue Eyes? Take a nap,” he murmured, and did a few mental calculations.

“Taking care of you has been the most tiring thing,” Cal teased, but Nigel was comfortable like this, and soothing when he touched him like that. “We have to go in five hours…”

“Two hours nap will be good to have when we’re on the plane over the Atlantic and you can’t fucking lay down,” Nigel murmured, and rolled to the side with Cal, then covered him up with a thick blanket from the bed, snuggling with him. 

They were in for a load of jet lag, that was true enough. Cal let Nigel snuggle him in, nuzzling his face against his, a soft bit of scruff starting in on Cal’s face. “Surprised you’re not offering to fuck me into sleeping.”

Nigel laughed at that, and nibbled at Cal’s earlobe. “You’d be way too excited after I fucked you to sleep,” he whispered, accent thick.

Groaning, Cal held Nigel closer. “I guess we’ll leave that for when we land.”

Nigel nodded and kissed Cal’s throat, softly. There was one last thing he wanted to do before they left, but Cal had to sleep, first. “At least most of the people there won’t understand the dirty things you’ll be screaming,” he purred.

Cal laughed and held Nigel over him, and then rolled to his side, curling up in his bed here one last time. “I guess they wouldn’t.”

Nigel watched Cal as he curled up, and touched the bit of stubble on his jaw as he stared at him. “I like this, by the way,” he whispered, softly.

Cal was exhausted, and falling asleep already, and hummed his reply gently against Nigel's neck, trusting the other man completely.

Nigel smiled, and let Cal sleep in his arms, then looked back at the phone on the foot of the bed. She would never really leave Cal alone, no matter where Cal went, she could always get him over the phone.

Nigel kissed Cal’s cheek, and wriggled out of his grasp, then scribbled a note:  _ went out for one last thing. Back soon, love Nigel. _

A borrowed car, and half an hour later, Nigel let himself into the care home through a service door someone had propped open so they could use it to smoke from on their breaks. Smokers, god fucking bless them. He managed to get up to Brenda’s room while staying away from cameras and witnesses, and knocked on the door.

Brenda opened the door, expecting her son, and stared slack jawed at Nigel, then tried to slam the door in his face. “Get out!” she'd learned enough about the man to know what he was.

Nigel pushed the door open with one gloved hand, and stepped in, then kicked the door closed with one foot, and glared into Brenda’s eyes up close, seething with disgust. “You and I are gonna have a little drink,  _ Brenda _ ,” he whispered, harshly. Nigel smiled at her, coldly, before he pushed her into a filthy armchair, and grabbed a bottle of hard liquor, then handed it to her, roughly. “You yell and scream enough all the fucking time over nothing that no one’s gonna come save you. You treat them all like shit, so actually, no one’s going to give a  _ fuck _ about anything I do to you. How’s it feel?”

“What are you talking about,” Brenda asked, voice sharp and breathless from years of smoking, as she fell back into the chair, her hands shaking. “Cal will hate you if you kill me.”

Nigel laughed at that, and unscrewed the bottle of whiskey, then shoved it at her. “Yeah. You should see the fucking way he cringes at the sound of your voice, you abusive piece of shit, now drink!” Nigel snapped, ready to shove the bottle down her throat.

Brenda took the bottle and started to take long sips, sputtering a little. “My son  _ loves _ me.”

“Just like you  _ loved _ him?” Nigel sneered, and pulled out a knife from his back pocket, flipping it open with one hand. “Your son fucking hates you, for good fucking reason. You’re not even human, you’re just a steaming sack of shit with skin,” Nigel hissed, with black eyes, boiling with rage as his voice stayed unsettlingly low, as soft as the sound of the hammer being drawn back on a handgun, and just as deadly.

“I don't know what he's told you,” Brenda said, narrowing her eyes as she took another drink, thinking she just might need it. “But I've never touched my son in anyway he didn't like.”

Nigel crammed the bottle in Brenda’s mouth, and tipped it up, pouring the amber-colored booze down her throat as he pinned her to her chair with one foot on her chest. “You’re a fuckin’ liar, Brenda. I always know a liar when I see one, now  _ DRINK _ . Is this how you made him drink? Made him fucking helpless? He was a little  _ boy _ for shit’s sake!” Nigel snarled, looming over Brenda with flashing eyes like some devil sent up from Hell to punish her for what she did.

She struggled and sputtered, choking down the liquid as she tried to push Nigel off her, kicking and pushing him.

Nigel was strong enough to wrestle a young, strong man into submission when he had to, Brenda was no match for him. “Harder to push someone around when he’s not a  _ five-year old boy _ , isn’t it!?” He pulled the bottle away to let her swallow, needing her blood to be drenched in what she used to use on Cal for the fitting end he had in mind for her. “Swallow that. I’m not fucking done with you yet. You know what I do for a living, Brenda? One of the things I do, and I fucking  _ like _ doing, is giving people an ending. Sometimes the ending is nice and quick, they’re here, and then before they even know it, they’re on the floor with a bullet in their head. That’s what I do to  _ nice _ people, Brenda. What the fuck do you imagine I’m going to do to  _ you _ ?”

Swallowing down everything in her mouth, Brenda shook harder, but more angry than scared, at least for now. “Cal doesn't like people like you. What do you think he'll do when he finds out what you've done to me?”

Nigel unscrewed a bottle of scotch this time, and tipped it down Brenda’s throat again, stopping only when she choked on the burning liquid, and held her nose, forcing her to swallow it to breathe.  He did it again, and again, going through the entire, full bottle, then tossed the bottle aside with a clatter. “I think Cal’s going to have the best sleep of his fucking life, and he’s not going to fucking flinch anymore when his phone rings. If he has to hate me for that to happen? So fucking be it.  _ That’s _ love, Brenda. A monster like you wouldn’t know it if it bit you in the ass,” he said, and began to spill the alcohol in her lap, over her chair, and then onto the floor so that it pooled around her, like she was clumsy with the bottle, and soaked herself with it. The air was thick with fumes now.

Brenda was drunk, far past it now as the alcohol seeped into her system. Everything Nigel said was blurry and hazy, and she struggled to even keep herself conscious at this point. “You…” the words just wouldn’t come out, her eyes rolled back in her head.

Nigel picked up her cigarettes, and shook one out of the box, then looked at it. “I used to smoke like a fucking chimney. Cal made me stop. I was always going to just fucking start again whenever I could, until I met you,” he said, “and then I realized that the smell, the fucking  _ smell _ of cigarettes was actually as disgusting as  _ you _ are,” he said, bluntly, and stuck the cigarette in her mouth. “So, thanks for that, I fucking guess. Alright. Time to light up. Last words, Brenda?” Nigel asked, as he found a match and struck it, holding it up as he glared at the old, miserable beast in the vodka-soaked chair.

“Rot in hell,” she murmured around the cigarette the best she could, her eyes glazed over but narrowed with hatred. She had a lot to say but nothing came out of her drunken, slurring mouth but mumbles.

“I’ll see you there, you sadistic, child-raping bitch,” Nigel said, and struck the match, then lit Brenda’s dangling cigarette,  and let the match drop in Brenda’s lap. The alcohol fumes ignited at once in a roar of orange flame, spreading all over her and down to the carpet. She was enveloped in a wall of angry fire that rose high enough to lick the ceiling, scorching it.

Screams tried to leave her mouth and lungs, but the fire ate at her too quickly and she was unable to move from her sluggish, drunken stupor. Nigel watched as she struggled behind the wall of flame, then went limp in the flames, the sounds and struggle gone.

Nigel slipped out of the apartment as the fire alarms went off, he hurried down an empty service stairwell, and out the door while everyone inside began to look into the building’s hallways for the source of the now shrieking fire alarm. He started the car, and drove away slowly, a feeling of peace inside him as he realized she would never, never, never bother Cal again. Cal was free of her, and it would look like the drunk had finally lit herself on fire as she nodded off in a stupor with a cigarette in her lips.

Nigel drove back to the compound, parked the car, removed the gloves, and pocketed them as he went back into the little bungalow, quietly, hoping not to wake Cal.

Cal was just getting up, and looking at the note Nigel left him, blinking at it slowly with a frown. He’d only been out two hours, and they had to get to the airport soon for their private flight back. He heard the front door, and stood. “Nigel?”

Nigel stepped in, and shrugged off the jacket he’d put on, tossing it on the couch. “Here, angel,” he called back with a little smile.

Something smelled faintly of ash, but Cal couldn’t quite place it, it was just a little bit. He crumpled the note and tossed it in the garbage as he passed, and then smiled at Nigel. “You went out?”

“Just quick, yeah, had something I had to do before we left,” Nigel murmured, and pulled Cal closer, holding him with a sigh to his chest, rocking him a little as he rubbed his back. “Good sleep?”

“Yes,” Cal answered, but kept his eyes up on Nigel’s face, concerned. Nigel had never left on his own before, or been so elusive and secretive. “Everything is okay?”

“Yeah, baby, everything is fine. Look, I-” Nigel was interrupted by the ringing of Cal’s phone in the bedroom, and he licked his lips, quite sure that he knew what this call was going to be about.    
  
Cal tensed, and squeezed Nigel’s hips before wrenching himself from his arms to go find his phone in the bedroom. He walked in and picked it up off the bed. He looked at it, frowning, and then picked it up. “Cal Roberts…” there was a pause as Cal listened and paced. “I’m sorry… what? She’s… there was a what?”   
  
The head nurse of the home explained very compassionately that Cal’s mother had disabled all the smoke alarms in her apartment so that she could chain-smoke without opening a window, yet  _ again _ , and from what they had found, it looked as though by the time the alarms in the hallway had gone off, she was already gone. It was an accident, clearly, she dropped cigarette ash in her lap after spilling a bottle of alcohol that they had found nearby. They were very sorry for Cal’s loss, of course, everyone was ...  even if they all knew Brenda was not much of a loss to anyone. It was the right thing to say.

“Thank you,” Cal said and hung up. He pocketed his phone and found a jacket, and their packed bags.

  
“Cal?” Nigel asked, watching his boyfriend as he moved about the bungalow, not sure what Cal was feeling at the moment, what he was doing.

“My mother is dead,” Cal murmured, packing the rest of their things. He was… relieved and yet felt pity at the same time. It was his mother, she was a monster. He tried to reason that.

Nigel swallowed, and watched Cal pack their things, slowly, then moved to wrap his arms around Cal from behind, hugging Cal tightly around his chest and torso before he turned him in his arms to hold him properly. “You okay?”

Cal had no siblings. No family. His mother was the last known connection to anything he and everything of his past. He stilled as Nigel hugged him, and he sagged back against him for a second, and then straightened, shoulders back. “Yeah. One less reason to stay here.” He’d pay for her funeral, but he wouldn’t attend it. Who could or would blame him? She’d be cremated now anyway.

Nigel closed his eyes, and buried his nose in Cal’s short hair, not certain if Cal could already guess the truth, or if it hadn’t occurred to him, yet. “I love you.”

Turning in Nigel’s arms, he could smell the soot and smoke a little clearer, and Nigel had been gone just enough time, and hadn’t answered where he’d been either. Cal watched Nigel’s face, his grim features lightening a little as his eyes flitted across every line with a new sense of calm. Slowly, Cal smiled. “I love you, too.”

  
Nigel could see it in Cal’s face, and touched his cheek with one palm, relaxing a little. A small part of him worried that maybe freeing Cal of his mother would come at the cost of Cal hating him. People could be irrational, crazy, and unpredictable in the face of any loss, but Cal looked anything but upset. “Yeah? You sure of that, Blue Eyes?”

Cal would simply never bring it up. It was easier to pretend he didn’t know, than to address it. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

“She didn’t fucking deserve you,” Nigel whispered, and rested their foreheads together with a little sigh, one hand cupped around the back of Cal’s neck.

Someday, maybe, Cal would believe that, but for now he was going enjoy not having to fear phone calls from his mother, no matter what never happened in her later years now, it had always been hard, but he’d always tried to love her the way a son should, and care for her in hopes that he was taking the high road. “Maybe…” He breathed out slowly, and kissed Nigel softly. “Let’s get going.”

Cal was too good to be burdened with caring for the woman who terrorized and abused him as a boy. He may not have been a saint, but Cal wasn’t about to kill his mother to stop her from sucking him dry, no matter how awful it was. Nigel, however, was more than willing to do what had to be done.

To set Gabi free, Nigel had to let her go. To set Cal free, he had to slay a monster, even if doing so meant Cal might have hated him for it.

Thankfully, Cal understood; he understood perfectly.  Cal freed Nigel from the crushing rubble that had buried him, and Nigel freed Cal from his parasitic mother. They had both seen one another’s need for help, and stepped in, when no one else had. They were even now. “Alright, let’s get the fuck out of here, angel,” Nigel sighed, and picked up a suitcase, then held his other hand out for Cal to take. “I want to stop for pizza on the way…”

“Okay, pizza first.”

They walked out, hand in hand, bags packed, and let the screen door shut behind them on the bungalow, for good.


End file.
